Fist Bumps vs. Bacteria

You know. Some people prefer the handshake, which I was I was reading just a few minutes ago about how there's this theory that the handshake evolves from a day when you had to prove that you didn't have a weapon in your hand. It seems a little outdated and it's wrought with complications anyway, hand pressure, hand, a texture of your hand, all that. Um Me, I'm getting more

and more on this fist bump badwagon. Oh yeah, yeah, I know, there's it has this kind of like a brow stigma apparently, which I was knowing not I'm aware of, but I mean, you have limited contact with the other person, which is especially great with like if I'm interacting with

my sister, who's even more standoffice than I am. It's like the only way that we can like physically acknowledge each other because like hugs are out, handshakes are out, but the fist bump works and that's like only like the corner knuckles, right, Like you guys don't even do four knuckles. No, no, no, you can just I mean, you know what way you can almost kind of have like a you know, just a slightest touch and it does the job. Grazing, grazing, a grazing, close fisted high five.

Is it sometimes called? Okay? Well, this may be a really good microbial strategy because, as we know from other podcasts and according to Stanford microbiologists Stanley Falcow, the world

is covered in a fine patina of feces. Yes, And I think about this every time that I get to this particular restaurant and there's a bowl of candy there, and my daughter always reaches for it, and I always kind of corral her away from it, because I think, no, the batilla of pieces is covering at least a couple of pieces of those candy, and if she ingests that, surely the next day will be seeing diarrhea. Well yeah, I mean it's it's I think a certain level of

fear regarding the bacterial world around us is is sensible. Uh, And that's why you know, you get into this area of the fist pone, this concern over the fist pond being possibly a better means of greeting ban that fully bear hug. Yeah, because think about it right now, you're marinating in about a hundred truly in microbial cells from

head to foot and mouth gut on your skin. That stuff gets around, and as we had discussed in our roller Derby microbiome, when you come into contact with people, it's very easy to transfer your microbial colony to another person. In fact, we saw that with those roller Derby teams that after matches they would swab the skin and find that one team's microbiotic which was the same by the way, because they shared a similar profile of microbiome, would begin

to try to colonize the other ones. So you really do have to be defensive about the microbes in the world. Yeah, they're good microbes out there, they're bad microbes out there, But this is the community move you've built, and we're understandably a little xenophobic about other people's microbial communities merging with our own, because it can lead to all sorts of complications. Well, especially when you begin to wonder whether

or not we're entering into a post antibiotic era. Yes, because for the longest you've had your antibiterial soap, like you know, big vats of it, big clear just columns of it with a giant pump on top. Right, and and and I've been guilty of this as well. At the slightest excuse, be it dirt or you just you just think of something a little dirty, You head over there, get like two squirts of the pump and just completely lathered down your hands, and you feel better and supposedly

you're you're cleaner well. And then of course you see this in a hospital setting at large, right, because you have to make sure that your surfaces are clean, that your skin is clean. And by the way, there's a lot of microbes in hospitals and they become antibacterial resistant, which is where we are today. But let me before we jump to that, I just wanted to mentioned that Hazel Barton, she's a professor of microbiology and geology at

the University of Ankron in Ohio. She has a really good article on Slate about this, and she talks about antibiotics, and she says their chemical keys. They're constructed to mimic seingular patterns to block, bind, and even collapse critical structures within the microbial cell. They do amazing things. They're really specific. They can kill one bacterial cell in a sea of

human cells, and she calls it a magic bullet. But she says that they are much more complex than anti cancer or anti viral drugs, and their complex structural nature and high specificity make them almost impossible for chemists to build from scratch or even synthesize, and that we rely on nature to design these molecules for us, and the

majority of these antibiotics come from other microbes. So she makes this case of saying that they have novel, unique structures and we are at a place where we really exploited a lot of resources here. Yeah, that's one of the things that that can be really mind blowing about this, and can be a kind of a startling and frightening revelation, is that any any bacterial agents out there are an

exhaustible resource. What have we done. We've gone in the natural world, like you said, we've gone underground, and we've we've we've looked at things in the soil, all right, what this can be used to fight a bacterial infection? This can be used and then eventually we've we've drafted everyone into the war against bacteria. So we have to go to increasingly more exotic locations to try and find those new keys to UH to unlock and unravel our

bacterial adversaries. That's a good way to put it, because meantime, in the meantime, you know, the clock is ticking, and we have all these antibacterial resistant microbes emerging. And we see this with MERSA and that it's actually named sequentially after the antibiotics. It's resistant too, and we see that it's responsible for thousands of deaths annually. This is, of course, methoslin resistant Stephococcus arius, right, And then you have other names,

less familiar emerging. We have carpet Penham resistant enter A size c R E. We have van Kommassen resistant enter a caucus v R E. And closter Ridium deficially we've seen that before, we talked about it. See diff no one on the street. So all of these things are emerging and in the meantime, you have this exhausted potential

market forces for for new drugs. Right. In fact, Barton makes the point that the last novel novel drug that came to the market was discovered in and it took nearly twenty years to enter the marketplace as something called cubasin and then which we discovered on the side of a volcano. I know, it's not that amazing. That was another one we had to go where we've drafted everyone in the immediate vicinity, where are these soldiers that we

haven't found yet? And that was one. Yeah. Another one was anthrosamysin, which could be effective against MERSA and anthrax, and that was actually found in deep ocean sediments. So you can see again that clock ticking and you know, trying to find new drugs to conquer this while the more other microbes are getting stronger and stronger and more

and more resistant. In fact, in March of this year, Dame Sally Davies, she's the u K's Chief Medical offers she said, hey, microbial antibiotic resistance is a threat that's on par with global warming and terrorist attacks. Let's take this really seriously. Yeah, because just look at Merca whereas MERCAS showing up showing up in hospitals like the place you don't want really dangerous anti bacterial resistant um agent to show up because you have all the people in

weakened states or immune systems are weakened. And uh, in two thousand five, almost ten percent of hospital door handles were shown to contain MERCA. So and and that's not even getting into the whole handwashing situation that has been a problem in many hospitals, you know, but the whole situation with doctors surgeons not washing their hands um, which is again a whole another issue. But but we'll get to that. We'll get to that, of course. Uh. In the meantime, just kind of have to look and see

what we can do right now. Now, Barton says, Hey, since we have to go to these more remote locations, let's begin to consider caves as a possible area of exploration for these microbes, because she says, they're extreme environments, they lack sunlight, they have scant resources, and it makes an ideal place to hunt for antibiots since microbes have

to be particularly hardy in order to survive. Yeah, I'd like to use the drafting analogy this is the equalency of of just heading out into the absolute boondocks and finding like the Family of Hillbillies and saying, hey, here's some able a whole bunch of able bodied boys here work in the farm. You guys can come and fight the fight, but you have to really go far. And like like you said, this is we're almos talking about an alien environment, just one that's kind of entombed within

our own. We you see really exotic forms of life at the visible level and then also at the macrobile level as well. Yeah, and what I love about this is that you can just amount and all these microbiologists bull lunking into these caves and coming up with these samples, and they're screening the genetic code of thousands of these micro organisms for novelty. Again, that's that novel compound that

they're looking for. And then what they do is they take that and they give it to analytical chemists and they use technologies like liquid chromatography mass spectromedy and ion mobility mass spectromeddy and that hones in on that novel and unusual compounds. So we have the means of finding it, and we have the technology. It's just again racing against

that clock. Yeah, and the possibility is really encouraging. Uh. It's reading that just one bacterium from one of these isolated cave systems could be found to have some upwards like thirty eight antibacterial compounds within. So so the payoff is pretty crazy, the payoff potentially. Yeah. All right, we're gonna take a quick break and we come back more about the war against the bacteria and we'll get back

to the fist punk a little bit. Yeah. Alright, so we're back and we are talking about this microbial world that we dwell in and how to better negotiate our way through it, especially when you consider the antibacterial resistance stuff out there. So what do we do we change our behavior? Right? Yeah, yeah, I mean if you can't, if you can't make the big advances against the enemy, you try accumulate all the small advances you can make. I mean that's how wars are one anyway, right, just

you build up all the little petty advantages. And one petty advantage. Uh. The argument is to be made is to start relying more on that fis bump as opposed to that handshake, especially in a hospital environment. That's what you're saying, is I need to ease off of the hot breath hugs. Yeah, and do something that's perhaps not quite as skin to skin contact. Fine, right, well, now

the studying question. Didn't we look at the hugs because again, the hospital environment where generally people knowing off that you know, you're not gonna have a big, giant, you know, stereotypical Russian hug every time you encounter somebody. But this particular research was publishing two thales and thirteen by the Journal

of Hospital Infection. Surgeons at West Virginia University, UH decided they were going to see if they could reduce the spread of infection just by fist bumping instead of shaking hands. The lead researcher on this was Tom of Cleveland, and he's a West Virginia plastic surgeon, and uh it was a really a small statement, but remarkable in their findings. Yeah, and we'll get to that in a second. But let's

back up and look at why this is important. First of all, even if your doctor is washing his or her hands, or you run and wash your hands soon after you clasp hands with another person, eighty percent of individuals retained some disease causing bacteria after washing. Okay, most people are doing it wrong, right. I mean, that's the whole adage that when you wash your hands you should do the ABC song twice through, and most people don't do that. I mean most of the time when I

go to the bathroom, I don't even hear anybody singing. Now, physicians are probably a little better about this, right, because they're more aware of it. Um. But here's the thing. They kind of have to have some sort of interaction with you, physicians, right, because if you think about it, if you are going to see a medical professional, you're probably there in what is usually a tense situation or

stressful situation. You don't usually go to the doctor when you're feeling great, right, So this can be a situation where you have to have that that sort of touchy feeling moment to create a sense of trust between the doctor and the patient. So this is why the doctor always engages you in a handshake. Right. Might seem sort of ridiculous because this is what I think every time my doctor reaches out of her hand, like please, don't I know if you've been doing this to people all

day long who are sick. But again, it is that social contract. So yeah, you want your surgeon, your doctor, whoever. You want some sort of human connection so that you don't feel like a piece of meat, you don't feel like a number. You want them to. You want to at least there to be an illusion that they care about your life. So this is why those surgeons thought, Okay, this is a very important thing here. This is not just hey, let's sit around and fist bump each other

and and just grow out all day. Let's actually see if we can reduce the amount of junk that gets spread around. And this is how it went down. So small group again, they just started doing the fist bumps

instead of the shaking. Now they cultured the bacteria grown on their hands, and they found that the handshake exposed more than three times as much skin surface area as the fist bump, and the contact average two point two point seven times longer, so more bacteria was transmitted as expected with the handshake versus the fist pump, where you have just you know, very small amount of skin. I mean, they're not even if you if you take your your fists and sort of bump them, you'll see that they're

they're they're not made to interlock. It's not like the handshake, which is kind of like the mating of two fleshy squids. Fleshy squid slushy squids of course, not too squid of the same species, the two different species squid. That's why I want squids. Well, I like this because I'm not a big handshake person anyway, Like I said, I'd rather hug um. And I do find it awkward sometimes because you know, you don't know whether or not to employ the super aggressive shake or the you don't want to

do like a limp fish shake either. You also, you can have different galvanic skin responses, right, so there's more sweat on your hands sometimes than others. It can be uh odd, especially when you find yourself with with cold dead hands like me, and you have to apologize every time you go to shake someone's hand. Well, one thing they pointed out in the study too, is that the social contract of it is beautiful because all right, so let's say you're you're on a no shaking hands roll,

like that's your goal for the day. Then what do you do when somebody extends to hand If you say, oh, I'm sorry, I can't shake hands today, or I'm not gonna you know, how do you politely get out of that. You're gonna on some level feel or or look like a jerk that you're gonna be dead in the water

if you don't have some sort of response. Right, But if they extend that hand for the shake and then you respond by extending that hand for the fist bump wall, all they have to do is just curl that's squid up into a fist and bam. Now, the study did not go into whether you should explode the fist at that point, if you you should do the peace sign and form the snail, or any of the other add

on bonuses that you may employ in your fist pump. Now, I would say that within maybe your social group, your friends, your family, you can do some of those variations and and risk a little bit more surface contact, right because most likely you're going to share some of your microbial colony with them. Yes, But outside of that straight on knuckles, Yeah, Like with my son, I do the fist pump, but then I have it explode and drew Polver's face, So

so there's a lot of like contact that way. You know. I have to say that before you had sent me this study. I didn't notice that in school the fist bump was being encouraged by by my daughter's teacher. And I don't know if that was just my daughter's teacher or what, but you know, there's a lot of hacking

going on, spreading of germs among that group. Well, that's interesting that maybe they're encouraging him or the fist bump in addition, of course to the Dracula elbow cough, which I saw a parent encouraging that on the playground the other day and I was like, yes, which is just fun to say to a kid anyway, Yeah, Dracula up there,

drack up. Maybe I don't know better terminology. Alright, So envision the future when we have a better understanding of the microbiome and uh, the threats, the inherent threats, and the beauties that come out of it. Right, we've talked about that. Do we just do away altogether with any sort of contact? Well, no, not. We don't want to do away with with contact. But I mean that's why

this is beautiful. It's the it's finding and finding out what we can lose and uh, and you know how we can sort of meet meet people halfway not actually see ourselves up in bubbles and refuse to to to touch each other. But but also not just just say hey, we're not hugging it out, then we're not human. You know.

I can't remember the exacts of this article that right, but there was sort of infestation of this woman and her family's house and I don't know if it was lies or something, but demons, demons, it was some sort of critter. And what happened is that they all sort of had to stop hugging. And she said they became very adept at doing this sort of smile eyes hug and she would stare at her son and sort of smile at him and try to hug him with her

eyes and he would do it back. And she said it was really kind of beautiful because they just slowed down, and of course they couldn't embrace, but they had that sort of communication. Could an air hug like where you don't actually touch for you kind of air hug the other person kind of, It's just I don't know that's in the realm of air guitar playing air sex. That's the thing. A thing, all right, Well, there you have it.

It's kind of a shorty, but it's a shorty that might save your life in some small way, and you can feel better about fis pumping instead of instead of shaking hand instead of high fiving. Uh, And then you don't have to feel like you're doing something those those too browish if you will. Yeah, it should go out of the brow sphere into the mainstream, I think, yeah, the brow sphere. Yeah, so hey, let us let us

know about this. We'd love to hear your thoughts on the fist bump versus the handshake, versus bacteria versus hugs. Everything in this in this episode is up for grabs, including diving down into deep caves for bacterial soldiers that we haven't ushered into this war just yet. You can find us all the normal places you can find us. Its stuff to bow your Mind dot com. That's our mothership. That's where all of the podcast episodes are, dating back all the way to the beginning. You can find all

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