Bacteria
Two years, three months, and one week after I return to the States I got my first bout of food poison. Yep - I thought it was a virus but it turned out to be a meat and dairy friendly bacteria. So for those of you worried about Delhi Belly and Montezuma's revenge - I say the states isn't any safer. Here are some fun facts about my new bacteria "friend", Campylobacter.
It takes three to five days for it to incubate in your system. Most people don't associate this food poisoning with food for that reason and it can be impossible to trace where it came from.
It tends to come from chicken. In fact, half of all raw chicken is infected with the campylobacter. This is why you always want to cook chicken really well. This bacteria doesn't survive heat at all. However, one drop of raw chicken juice (eeewwww!!!) can infect a person and make them sick. So this is why people are freakish about washing cutting boards!
Chickens can be infected while alive too but they don't get sick from it (Lucky them). Cows and beef can also be infected, though it is less common. However, a cow can have it and it can get into her milk. This happened once and a class of school kids who visited a dairy farm and drank un-pasteurized milk all got sick. Generally though there are not mass infections of the campylobacter.
Taken early antibiotics can help lessen the symptoms, however, not always, and taken late they can have no affect at all or even help breed antibiotic resistant bacteria.
Generally it takes seven to ten days to recover from the campylobacter.
Seven to ten days!!!!!!!! What a fabulous weight loss program I have stumbled into…