People with Compromised Immune More Susceptible to Food Poisoning: Don’t Let YOUR Immune System Ruin Your Summer:
“According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) each year 48 million illnesses, 128,000 hospitalizations, and 3,000 deaths in the country can be traced to foodborne pathogens”
Food poisoning is not a fun illness. The symptoms can consist of one or more of the following: nausea, vomiting, watery or bloody diarrhea, cramps, and a fever. Other, severe and longer term side effects are also often reported. Food poisoning, otherwise known as foodborne illness, is “caused by consuming contaminated food.” The most frequent causes of food poisoning are bacteria, viruses, parasites, or their toxins – a small subset of food poisoning cases are also due to chemicals or foreign objects in the food.
“Infectious organisms or their toxins can contaminate food at any point of processing or production.”
The food contamination can transpire at home if the food is poorly cooked or mistakenly managed. And while this may be risky for all members of the family, people with weakened immune systems are much more susceptible to food poisoning or other illnesses. “People with weakened immune systems due to diabetes, liver, or kidney disease, alcoholism, and HIV/AIDS; or receiving chemotherapy or radiation therapy cannot fight germs and sickness as effectively.”
Your immune system is a vital part of your body that protects and fights infection from your body. Your immune system also recognizes all of the cells in your body, so if anything unfamiliar enters you’re your body, such as unknown germs or parasites, your immune system fights to get rid of it. Unfortunately, the immune system has its own flaws. In some people’s bodies, the immune system attacks its own body’s cells, not realizing it is attacking itself. This is what causes autoimmune diseases. In others, the immune system is being “repressed”, such as in pregnant women, to prevent the body from rejecting the fetus.
If food poisoning infects someone with a weakened immune system, the symptoms can be more severe and they can develop more serious, life-long conditions such as
post-infectious IBS
,
Listeria-induced dementia
,
reactive arthritis
, or
hemolytic uremic syndrome
.
In fact, every year more than 200,000 Americans develop long-term ailments from a bout of food poisoning, says Elaine Scallan and her CDC colleagues who have investigated long-term illness after food poisoning. Dr. Scallan used, as an example on patient who she suspected would be unable to be self-sufficient after a bout of food poisoning . She developed
Guillan-Barre Syndrome
that struck after she drank raw milk contaminated with
Campylobater
.
While every family needs to take the necessary precautions when it comes to preventing food poisoning, families with those who have weakened immune system need to pay special attention to food safety.
To ask additional questions about victims with
Compromised Immune More Susceptible to Food Poisoning
or to speak to a food poisoning lawyer, call 1-888-335-4901.
