More people should know about... : Germ Killing Soap

This is the first in a series of public service bloggings about things the public should know about their health but generally don't. As a broad disclaimer, any information contained in the body of this post and any other post should not be taken verbatim or as a substitute for real medical opinion. If you have real questions, ask a doctor you know, not somebody who may be pretending to be a doctor in the media... I'm looking at YOU Sunjay.

While using soap that kills germs sounds like a good idea in the first place, here's why it isn't. All the germ killing soaps out there say they kill 99.999999% of all bacteria. Why does it kill only 99.999999% of bacteria? Because out of the millions and billions and trillions of little microbes that live on your hands, there's always one bastard that has to be "resistant", and can't be killed with the soap. Pretend this picture below is your hand (Figure 1). The smileys are bacteria. None of these bacteria can cause disease. The resistant bastard is represented by the green smiley. The yellow smileys are unresistant bacteria which are about to not be so smiley cause THEY'RE GONNA DIE!

Figure 1

So you wash your hands and after you're left with only the green resistant bastard on your hand. Of course, he's not hurting anyone. He's just a tough little cookie. So cute! So square! Well, wait till he reproduces a few times (Figure 2).

Figure 2

Now you have an assload of resistant bacteria on your hand that aren't going anywhere. But wait! There's more! Not only are they now resistant, but through some bad luck and some mutation, one of them has gone rogue. That's right, he's not a happy smiley anymore. He's become one that's gonna give you the runs all day and all night...(Figure 3)

Figure 3

And, little known fact, bacteria can talk with each other. And when they talk with each other they give each other all kinds of information. Like how to turn into a red triangle (Figure 4).

Figure 4

And before you know it, your hand is chock full of red triangles just itching to ruin your formerly non explosive watery diarrhea day (Figure 5).

Figure 5

And the worst part is when you go to the hospital to get it taken care of, the drugs don't work cause all the bacteria on your hands have become resistant to them. How's that for suck?

So why does regular soap work better?

Well, regular soap doesn't get rid of all bacteria either. The difference is regular soap leaves behind random bacteria, not necessarily the ones that are resistant to antibiotics. So instead of getting only the green bugs seen in Figure 2, usually only yellow bugs are left behind. And whenever green bugs are left behind, there're usually enough yellow ones around to take up enough real estate and eat enough food to stop the greens from growing up and taking over your hand. In this way, if any of the bugs on your hands becomes evil (red triangles) the chances of them being evil AND resistant are very low. And your friendly neighborhood doctor will be able to fix you with some medication (Figure 6).

Figure 6