How to protect yourself from intestinal infections

March 26, 2017, 10:33 p.m

The arrival of heat cre­ates good con­di­tions for the repro­duc­tion of microbes. How to avoid meet­ing them?

Pho­to: Thinkstock/ fotobank.ua

Warm days have arrived. All this, of course, pleas­es, but you still need to be care­ful. In the heat, more than ever, microbes that are path­o­gen­ic for the intestines feel good, which hap­pi­ly live in untreat­ed water and unwashed food. What microbes are we talk­ing about?

Microag­gres­sors

There are three groups of bac­te­ria that can cause var­i­ous intesti­nal dis­eases:

• bac­te­r­i­al intesti­nal infec­tions: sal­mo­nel­la, dysen­teric bacil­lus, cholera vib­rio, etc.;
• pro­to­zoal intesti­nal infec­tions: amoe­ba, lam­blia, sporovik, etc.;
• viral intesti­nal infec­tions: rotavirus, ade­n­ovirus, etc.

Curi­ous­ly, dif­fer­ent infec­tions have their own food pref­er­ences. For exam­ple, sal­mo­nel­la enters a per­son through infect­ed eggs, milk, meat. Dysen­tery stick — with unwashed veg­eta­bles and fruits, cholera vib­rio — with con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed drink­ing water. And E. coli hap­pens on any prod­ucts and house­hold items.

Secu­ri­ty mea­sures

Abdom­i­nal pain, nau­sea, vom­it­ing, diar­rhea, dehy­dra­tion, fever are symp­toms that cause intesti­nal infec­tions. In order not to catch an infec­tion, you must always fol­low these rules:

• wash­ing hands before eat­ing;
• wash food thor­ough­ly before cook­ing or eat­ing;
• do not use oth­er peo­ple’s cut­lery and dish­es;
• store food in a cool place.

stop the attack

Our immune sys­tem itself copes with a small num­ber of microbes that have entered the body. But if we are talk­ing about a colony, then it is impos­si­ble to cope here with­out exter­nal help. The tac­tics of treat­ing intesti­nal poi­son­ing and infec­tious dis­eases are as fol­lows:

• pro­longed hunger. The intestines need rest;
• elim­i­na­tion of dehy­dra­tion. Drink weak saline solu­tions;
• detox­i­fi­ca­tion. Take uni­ver­sal char­coal sor­bents (prefer­ably in cap­sules). Ear­ly intake of these drugs per­fect­ly removes tox­ins from the body, acts quick­ly and for a long time.

By the way, sor­bents will also help with poi­son­ing by those prod­ucts that were grown using chem­i­cals.

Expert opin­ion:

Mikhail Petrov, diag­nos­ti­cian, doc­tor of the high­est cat­e­go­ry

When to see a doc­tor:

Fol­low your well-being. If with­in 2 days the state of health has not improved, the pain in the abdomen has not dis­ap­peared, the tem­per­a­ture has risen, vom­it­ing and diar­rhea have become more fre­quent (a par­tic­u­lar­ly dan­ger­ous symp­tom is diar­rhea mixed with blood), urine has become dark, urgent­ly call an ambu­lance. An impor­tant point. If a child or an elder­ly per­son falls ill, it is bet­ter not to wait, but to imme­di­ate­ly con­sult a doc­tor and not self-med­icate.

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The opin­ion of the edi­tors may not coin­cide with the opin­ion of the author of the arti­cle.