Welcome to Brainstuff from house Stuff Works dot com where smart happens. Hi Am Marshall Brain with today's question, how does boculi is um work? Have you ever heard someone say don't feed honey to babies. It's one of those rules that needs more publicity because it's important. But what is wrong with honey? It has to do with botuli is um. The word boculi is um describes a type
of poisoning. Boculi is m bacteria create a protein called bachlin, which invades excitatory nerve cells where they meet with muscle fibers and blocks the junctions so that no signals can get through. The result is paralysis, and in severe cases, it totally immobilizes and kills the patient. Botulism bacteria are common in nature, but they're killed by oxygen. Therefore, the bacteria forms spores that protect them from oxygen, and these
spores activate once they get into oxygen free environments. The most common way to get botchuli is um is from improperly canned food. Once the can is sealed, it creates an oxygen free environment. The can is then heated, and if it's heated properly, the spores die If the can isn't heated properly, the spores activate inside the sealed can and fill it with toxin. Because botch alen is a protein, heating will destroy it. But if the canned food is
eaten cold, botulism occurs. Babies get botulism from honey in a different way. Bees naturally collect botuli is um spores as they're out collecting nectar, and they mix those spores into the honey. Most people can eat these spores without any problem because we have robust immune systems that eliminate the spores. Infants, on the other hand, do not have these defenses yet, so when a baby eats honey, the spores find themselves inside the oxygen free intestine of the
baby and they come to life. They produced the tocsin wall inside the baby, and that poisons the baby. Do you have any ideas or suggestions for this podcast? If so, please send me an email at podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, go to how stuff works dot com.