Question: What makes some types of bacteria bad for you, and some good?

Alex Reid answered on 15 Nov 2018: last edited 15 Nov 2018 4:15 pm

Hi Zedoyxz. I guess the thing about bacteria is that, like all life on earth, they want to spread their genes. A key distinction between good and bad bacteria is whether their interest aligns with our own or not. What I mean by that is that you can have a mutually beneficial relationship with some bacteria (in biology this is called ‘symbiosis’). For example, the bacteria in our gut help us digest food and convert nutrients, but they also get a constant supply of food from us without having to go anywhere! We rely a lot on these type of ‘good’ bacteria and your body is currently hosting trillions of them. In situations like this both us and the bacteria benefit. On the other side of the coin we get ‘bad’ bacteria. In this case there is no mutual benefit, and the bacteria hijack our bodies in some way only for their own interests. They multiply at our expense and some symptoms of the illnesses they cause, such as diarrhea, can help them spread even further (i.e. to other people). This is a really simple overview and in reality there are millions of different types of bacteria and they all do different things. The difference between good and bad really comes down to if they are working with us or against us…