Everything we eat eventually finds its way into our system. Food serves as our bodies' fuel, sustaining us with our much-needed energy and nutrients to help us survive physically. On the contrary, it could also be the main cause of our expiration, especially when it contains a form of poison or the deadly botulism toxin.
Identifying Food-borne Botulism
Brought about by a nerve toxin created by a bacterium known as clostridium botulinum, botulism is one serious ailment none us must disregard. It is capable of paralyzing our muscles. Three types of botulism are identified: wound, infant, and food-borne or food botulism.
The primary cause of food botulism is consuming food that contains the botulism neurotoxin. More often than not, the culprits are inappropriately processed home canned foods. The illness starts to manifest after we have eaten these contaminated processed foods that are also inappropriately cooked. Nevertheless, it does not mean to say that only home processed and cooked foods could be the only source of this deadly neurotoxin. Commercially prepared food can be contaminated too.
How Botulism Affects Our Bodies
Our nervous system bears the brunt of the botulism toxin. The symptoms would normally begin to manifest 12-36 hours after ingesting the deadly toxin. Certain cases, however, show that they could start appearing either as early as six hours or 10 days later. The sysmptoms of botulism includes the following: breathing and swallowing difficulties, weakened muscles, urinary incontinence, sagging eyelids, bleary or double vision, dry mouth, and at times, diarrhea. In turn, these could move on to cause paralytic ileus, a non-mechanical disruption of our gastrointestinal motor activity, accompanied by constipation.
The symptom of weakening muscles usually starts with our heads, and then moves down to our shoulders. It continues going farther down until it reaches our feet. Should the we fail to address these first set of symptoms, they would eventually lead to paralysis that includes our respiratory muscles. Once it reaches the latter, death would likely follow. Therefore, the minute we experience any of these indications we should seek medical help as soon as we can. In line with this, we should not throw away suspected food that might have caused these symptoms, so medical experts can evaluate them.
Ways of Dealing with Botulism
Treating food-borne botulism would require removing the contaminated food from our bodies through such techniques as induced vomiting or enemas. However, if our symptoms have already transcended to respiratory failure and paralysis, we would be subjected to intensive medical attention, which includes breathing through the help of a breathing machine for weeks.
With the gravity of the consequences of ingesting botulism contaminated foods, our best defense would always be prevention. We have to ascertain that all of our canned and processed foods are prepared and cooked adequately. To decrease the risk of contamination, manufacturing companies or anyone who processes foods should see to it that he/she strictly observes hygienic procedures. Being subjected to high temperature is the key to killing the botulism neurotoxin. Hence, it is best if we boil home canned foods for 10 minutes first before we consume them. Also, we should not attempt to taste, moreover, eat any food that emits a funny or unusual odor, or those coming from unintentionally puffed up containers.
