[Creative Cultivation Program] How dirty are your mobile phone, remote control, and bed sheets? They are like a garbage dump!

Author: Shao Menglong

Reviewer: Ma Zansong, Deputy Director of the Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai Fifth People's Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University

The alarm clock wakes us up on the weekend morning. We wake up lazily from our sleep, pick up our phones to turn off the alarm, stretch ourselves, make our beds, get dressed, wash up, eat breakfast, watch a movie, pick up the remote control or mouse, and a leisurely day begins. These seemingly simple and common things hide many health risks and even "life killers".

Today we will start with your daily life and count the "garbage dumps" hidden around us.

A person spends one third of his life lying in bed. Brandon Boll, a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin, studied the state of air pollution in the microenvironment of sleep. He detailed his findings in the journal Indoor Air.

Boll first placed a double bed in a closed room, covered it with a 225-thread-count sheet, and then spread artificial dust on the bed to replace the microorganisms such as fungal spores and dandruff scattered on the bed.

The volunteers who participated in the experiment put on clean clothes, then sat on the bed and rolled over. At this time, the test instrument measured the particles that were raised, and these particles were inhaled by the volunteers. Boll's research found that the concentration of these particles was very low. But such a concentration can still affect our health because we spend nearly 8 hours a day in bed.

Based on the amount of time an average person spends at home, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that the risk of asthma and chronic heart disease from indoor air pollution is greater than from outdoor pollution.

After a whole night of sleep, our body will excrete about 200ml of sweat. The dampness and warmth of the quilt, as well as your shed skin flakes, saliva, and even blood accidentally stained on the sheets, all provide a better living environment for bacteria and mites. This is their paradise. So in addition to dust, scientific research has shown that there are at least 15 million mites in your bed, which can cause you to suffer from asthma and allergic rhinitis.

The solution to tiny animals such as mites or bed bugs is to wash and dry your bedding frequently, keep the room ventilated and dry, clean up dead corners in the room in time, and don't give dust mites a chance to survive.

When the alarm goes off, we touch our phones first. What you may not expect is that there are more than 2,000 types of bacteria on the surface of your phone. They live in the screen protectors, beautiful phone cases, charging ports, speakers and other sanitary blind spots of the phone, and even on your chargers and data cables.

Anhui Province has conducted a cluster and random sampling survey on the microbial contamination of college students' mobile phones. 145 college students' mobile phones from two universities were randomly selected for sampling, bacterial culture and counting. The results showed that the rate of bacterial excess on mobile phones of the 145 college students participating in the survey was 68.97%, among which the rate of bacterial excess on medical students' mobile phones was 74.00%, and the rate of bacterial excess on engineering students' mobile phones was 57.78%, with statistically significant differences (P<0.05). The final conclusion of the experiment was that the microbial contamination of college students' mobile phones was relatively serious, and relevant knowledge popularization and health education for college students should be strengthened.

The common types of bacteria on mobile phones, remote controls, and keyboards are mainly E. coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and Streptococcus. As one of the most common bacteria on mobile phones, E. coli may cause urinary tract infections. Staphylococcus aureus is almost everywhere because it has a strong ability to adapt to the environment. If you have a weak resistance or are injured and have not been disinfected in time, it will infect you and cause food poisoning, wound suppuration, and even internal organ infection. Although most Streptococci do not cause disease, they will take advantage of your low immunity and enter when you are weak.

You say you have mysophobia and keep your room spotless every day, but be careful, millions of microorganisms are still everywhere in your bedroom. They hide in door handles, remote controls, mice, keyboards, bed sheets and other places that are touched by your hands and body, accompanying you from work to life, from day to night.

At this point, some people think that the environment they live in is so dirty, how can they live better and avoid being disturbed by these microorganisms? In fact, this kind of tension is unnecessary, because most of the microorganisms in the bedroom can be found on our bodies. Take bacteria as an example. The number of bacteria living on each person is ten times the number of cells in our body.

The bacteria that breed in bedrooms and bathrooms are all retained in every corner of the bedroom along with our hair, dandruff, sweat, blood, saliva and other organic and inorganic substances. Therefore, if we maintain good personal hygiene habits, clean the bedroom environment regularly, and keep the room ventilated and dry, we can greatly reduce the harm of microorganisms to our bodies.

Then someone asked: Don’t we still have to sleep with those “health killers” that we cannot handle or ignore every night? In fact, there is no need to worry too much, because most bacteria are not pathogenic, and the appropriate intake of external microorganisms is also a benign stimulation to our own immune system.

So next, you know what to do, why not go and clean your bedroom!

References:

Clinical Microbiology and Microbiological Testing, Zhang Zhuoran, Ni Yuxing - People's Medical Publishing House

Quantitative analysis and species identification of microorganisms on the surface of mobile phone films, "Science and Technology Innovation and Productivity" 2016 Issue 11 | Wang Bin, Ren Nannan, Zhang Qingfang, Qiao Hui

Survey on the microbial contamination of college students' mobile phones, Journal of Qiqihar Medical College, 2018, No. 12 | Huang Yiwen, Min Xing, Wang Yan

Investigation on the microbial contamination of computer keyboards, China Practical Medicine, Issue 35, 2008 | Xing Zhilong, Zhang Xiaodong, Lin Hongmei

You are always there when I sleep, "Northerners" 2012 Issue 11 | Leorance

Sleeping with Dust, Xinmin Weekly, Issue 4, 2016 | Wang Xinli and Liu Qili

Progress in clinical research on human Demodex and skin health. CNKI [cited on 2019-06-24]

This article is produced by the Science Popularization China-Creation Cultivation Program. Please indicate the source when reprinting