Occasionally Preposterous, Repeatedly Scrutinizing, and Sporadically Egotistical: My Two Cents

Less wizzing and more of number 2, but still. I also couldn't say Gi Wiz cause a Gi is an actual thing and it would be pronounced gee for it to make sense. Would you like to hear me ramble on for a while longer? I can you know. Why Gee? Because giardia that's why. I could also have made a joke about smiling, but nah. Why you ask again? Because giardia is also known as the "smiling parasite" since it is always in a good mood probably.  Giardia is an anaerobic, flagellated parasite that lives in the small intestines of many animals around the world. Dare I say, it is almost cute looking. While there are many species of giardia, giardia lambila most commonly infects you humans. I mean we humans.....The parasite thrives in the lumen of our small intestine but is hardy enough to live outside of the body. It is adept at surviving in the environment in a cyst stage, not at all like the cysts on Dr. Pimple Popper, but rather a dormant form of the parasite. During the encystme...

I don’t know why you’d cry about lactobacilli, or LB as those of us in the know call them. I guess if you hated yogurt maybe. Who doesn’t like some good Greek yogurt or kefir? Pro tip: the literal king of yogurt (it’s the actual name so it must be true) is Juju Dhau. Best yogurt ever, from Nepal, made in clay jars and alone it would be worth a vacation there as if you needed another reason to fly to Nepal. I digress, now that you know about the king of yogurt let’s all cry over LB together shall we? LB is an aerotolerant, anaerobic, gram positive, rod shaped, non spore forming bacteria found in our gut, on our genitals, and in our mouths as well as other places. You’ve probably seen the 498,367 articles about probiotics and the importance of your gut microbiome as it relates to everything from depression to IBD to why you’re single and why the ice cream shop is always out of your favorite flavor. Does it actually though? Read my previous articles on gut pathogens and I won’t see so far...

Salmon is much less appetizing with the -ella at the end of it. But Salmonella is also the couple name of my brother and his girlfriend so thats neat-o. Salmonella is neat-o also but for different reasons. Named after D. E. Salmon, Salmonella  is a gram-negative, rod shaped, non-spore-forming, intracellular, facultative anaerobic bacteria. There are two species, only one of which I will waffle on about here, S. enterica.  I will not call it SE because command+I is not my friend today.  When people hear of SE generally it is in the context of food borne diarrhea and vomiting, typhoid is also caused by SE, just a different serotype. On another note, serotype are variations in a species based on surface antigen. For Salmonella as a whole, there are 2,500 serotypes. Yowza. This is useful for looking at outbreaks and determining which cases are from the same outbreak and which are background noise. If everyone who ate at the unnamed chicken joint has type 1 but this guy who di...