Avoiding Chicken to Avoid Urinary Tract Infections
Back in the 1970s, studies of women over time found that movement of bacteria from the rectum into the vaginal area preceded the appearance of bladder infections. It took another twenty-five years, though, before DNA fingerprinting techniques proved that E. coli strains residing in the gut serve as the reservoir for urinary tract infections (UTIs).
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Another fifteen years passed before scientists tracked down the ultimate culprit, the original source of some of the UTI-associated bacteria in the rectum: chicken. McGill University researchers were able to capture UTI-causing E. coli at the slaughter plants, tracing them to the meat supply and, eventually, to urinary specimens obtained from infected women.As a result, we now have
direct proof that bladder infections can be a zoonosis—an animal-to-human disease.This is a critical discovery, since UTIs affect more than ten million women each year in the United States at the cost of more than $1 billion.
Even worse, it turns out that many of the strains of E. coli in chicken that cause UTIs are now resistant to some of our most powerful antibiotics.
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Can’t we solve this crisis by simply distributing meat thermometers and making sure people cook chicken thoroughly? No—because of the crosscontamination issue. Studies have shown that handling raw chicken can lead to intestinal colonization even if you don’t eat any of it. In that case, it doesn’t matter how well you cook your chicken. You could incinerate it to ash and still walk away infected. After infection, the drug-resistant chicken bacteria was then found to multiply to the point of becoming a major part of the research subject’s gut flora.
The reason most people have more fecal bacteria in their kitchen sinks than their toilet seats is likely because they prepare their chickens in the kitchen, not the bathroom. But what if you’re really careful? A landmark study, published as “The Effectiveness of Hygiene Procedures for Prevention of Cross-Contamination from Chicken Carcasses in the Domestic Kitchen,” put this question to the test. Researchers visited five dozen homes, gave each family a raw chicken, and asked them to cook it. After the bird was cooked, researchers returned to find bacteria from chicken feces Salmonella and Campylobacter, both serious human pathogens—all over the families’ kitchens: on the cutting board, utensils, cupboard, the refrigerator handle, the oven handle, the doorknob, and so on.
Obviously, people didn’t know what they were doing, so the researchers then repeated the experiment, but this time gave the families specific instructions.
After they cooked the chicken, the subjects were told to wash these surfaces with hot water and detergent, specifically the cutting board, utensils, cupboard, handles, and knobs. Yet the researchers still found pathogenic fecal bacteria all over.
Reading the study, you could tell the researchers were getting a bit
exasperated. Finally, they insisted the subjects use bleach. The dishcloth used to clean up was to first be immersed in bleach disinfectant, and then the subjects were to spray a bleach solution on all surfaces and let it sit for five minutes.
However, the researchers returned to still find Salmonella and Campylobacter on some utensils, a dishcloth, the counter around the sink, and the cupboards.
The extent of the kitchen contamination was much less, but still, it appears that unless you treat your kitchen like a biohazard laboratory, the only way to guarantee you’re not going to leave fecal pathogens around the kitchen is to not bring them into your house in the first place.
There is some good news: It’s not as if you eat chicken once and your gut is colonized for life. In the study in which volunteers became infected after just handling the meat, the chicken bacteria that tried to take over their gut only seemed to last about ten days.
The good bacteria in their guts seemed able to muscle the bad guys out of the way. The problem, unfortunately, is that people tend to eat chicken more than once every ten days, so they may be constantly reintroducing these chicken bugs into their systems.
DR. APPIAH
Dr. Appiah is a Natural Health Therapist (Naturopath) who engages the natural healing agents given by God to save lives. EAT FOOD AS MEDICINE! EAT TO LIVE, DON'T LIVE TO EAT!! FOR BOOKINGS AND MORE: WANT TO ADVERTISE YOUR PRODUCTS? WANT A PERSONAL(CERTIFIED) NATURAL MEDICINE PRACTITIONER? REACH ME DIRECTLY ON WHATSAPP +233245643615 appiahinok@gmail.com
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