What is MRSA? Another Reason We Need Good Bacteria

The Era of the Super Immune System

A few years back, Luke was working on the house when, after putting on a pair of heavy duty gloves, he detected what seemed to be a small burr in one of the fingers. When he shook his glove, a brown spider dropped to the ground and ran off.

MRSA after spider bite. MRSA is very common in Hawaii.

The next day, the top of his right hand was red, hot and swollen, suggesting a potential bacterial infection at the site of a spider bite. A few hours after that, the redness had already crept up his wrist, so I put Luke on a course of Augmentin. When the infection failed to respond, I suspected MRSA (methcillin resistant Staph aureus) and added Cipro.

I’ll spare you the gory details of the healing wound. The point is, what might have been a disfiguring infection was soon stopped in its tracks: the drugs worked.

But what if they didn’t? (more…)

Is dairy paleo? (part 2) Revising history with new perspectives on flocks of goats, femur bones and feckless nutritionism

Last week I told you that I find the research suggesting milk may not be good for us very unconvincing. This week we continue the conversation by asking the question When did dairying being? If it began in the Paleolithic era, as I believe, then our genes have been depending on these nutrients for thousands of generations.

Petroglyph of woman milking an ancient cow-like animal. From the "Cave of Swimmers" in what is now the Sahara desert.

The History of Domestication

Various historical writers have tried to sell us on the idea that people were hunter-gatherers for an extended period of time and then BAM! abruptly switched to farming the minute they learned to smelt bronze and make tools that, among other things, enabled them to put their suddenly domesticated animals to work in the fields. I have to say find it unlikely that so many major cultural changes would have taken place simultaneously.

I know, you’re probably thinking Dr Cate, you’re not a historian. Who cares what you think about history? Here’s the thing: The unraveling of history’s big questions requires input from many scientific specialists and, given the fact that there are so many claims made around the health implications of eating meat and dairy products, the history of animal domestication is very much a medically relevant topic.

So back to my point. It’s hard to harness an animal to a plow. You need leatherworkers, metalsmiths, a ton of stored seeds to plant in the fields, places to store the seeds and then to store the food that grows and on and on.

Much easier than all that is (more…)

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