Okay. We have quite a few chocolate candy bars leftover from tonight's trick or treating, which suddenly aren't so appealing anymore.
My dentist and my waistline thank you.
This was always a difficult treatment, though it was highly efficacious. It goes against the grain for doctors to give what amounts to a septic cure.
During their schooling, it is very typical for young doctors to at some point become intensely bacteriophobic and obsessed with hygiene. But the light has finally dawned that people are utterly reliant on microorganisms to maintain good health.
Our immune systems have actually adapted to take into account some hundred common parasites that can afflict people, and may to some extent be reliant on the presence of some of them in a functional triangle with our flora. That is, our bacteria also interact with the parasites we no longer typically have.
And overlaying it all are an immense number of viruses, most of which are fortunately “bacteriophage”, or bacteria-attacking viruses, that keep our bacterial cultures under control.