{"id":162306,"date":"2024-05-09T17:52:11","date_gmt":"2024-05-09T23:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tecscience.tec.mx\/en\/?p=162306"},"modified":"2024-12-10T17:13:08","modified_gmt":"2024-12-10T23:13:08","slug":"fear-of-bacteria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tecscience.tec.mx\/en\/health\/fear-of-bacteria\/","title":{"rendered":"Is It Time to Rethink Our Fear of Bacteria?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Covid-19 pandemic had repercussions on people\u2019s mental health. Frightened by this invisible virus, they became stressed about the possibility of infection at any moment. Depression and anxiety therefore increased by 25 percent around the world, according to research<\/a> by the World Health Organization (WHO).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This fear of microorganisms is known as mysophobia or germophobia,<\/strong> and the condition can sometimes be more dangerous than the actual risk of coming into contact with bacteria, for example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since they were discovered, one of the reasons why microorganisms have a bad name<\/strong> is that scientific research has focused on the ones that harm us, says Katy Ju\u00e1rez<\/a>, an environmental microbiology specialist from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBefore, you could only cultivate only one bacterium for study out of a hundred. That\u2019s no longer the case, as we can use mass sequencing to extract all the information, which means a great deal of diversity has been discovered,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We now know more about these microorganisms and their composition, such as anaerobic bacteria<\/strong>, which formed on the planet when there was no oxygen and have survived by breaking down metals.<\/strong>
\u201cThey get their energy from eating them, using the electrons to breathe. However, as they also deposit these, we can harvest them to produce electricity,\u201d says Ju\u00e1rez.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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