You have already learnt that we can get sick, if virus and harmful bacteria enter our body through our mouth, nose and eyes, through scratches of the skin, when we eat and drink and when giving birth.
How can we protect ourselves from virus and bacteria?
The best advice is to keep your hands clean:
Watch this video about hand washing:
Hand washing
The importance of hand washing
FACTS
Having clean hands is the best you can do to avoid getting sick from virus and bacteria
All that´s left for you to do is to answer a few questions on the next page.
Before you do that, please answer this question:
Do you agree that your body is fantastic?
Hopefully you have – together with your friends – said hallo to your body and found the key to knowing your body better.
Thank you. Your Mr. Bean
Bacteria and virus can provoke illness. But what are these guys and why are some of them good guys and some of them bad guys for us?
Bacteria and virus are so very tiny, that you cannot see them with your naked eye. Bacteria are a sort of micro ”insects” and virus are a sort of micro-micro ”insects”. You need 1.000 bacteria holding hands to reach from one end of an ordinary ant to the other. And you need 1.000 virus to reach from one end of a bacteria to the other end.
Bacteria are all over. You can find them in the river, in the water down the earth, inside the earth itself, inside all plants and animals and on and inside all human beings. Most bacteria are not harmful to us. Some bacteria we even cannot live without, because they assist in the stomach and the intestines to dissolve the food we eat into tiny, tiny parts. If the bacteria are inside our stomach and intestines all of them are good to us, because they make sure, that there is no space for harmful bacteria. Even bacteria living on our skin are good for us, because they prevent harmful bacteria to settle down.
Virus are harmful micro-micro “insects”, that enter and exploit plants, bacteria, animals and human beings, because that’s the only way they can multiply.
If you want to repeat facts about bacteria and virus, watch this video:
Holes in your teeth
How to brush your teeth
How to cure a tooth ache
These are the ways we can catch a cold, get the flu, get tuberculosis and get diarrhea. Watch closely these videos:
What happens in your body, when you get sick?
When virus or harmful bacteria get into your body, they are immediately attacked by the body. White blood cells and lymph are directed to the virus and bacteria to destroy them. You can watch the attack, when the intrusion takes place in a scratch of your skin. It´s called inflammation and it is good for you, it repairs your skin.
No matter which parts of your body the virus and harmful bacteria have entered, the white blood cells will penetrate the walls of the blood veins find them and try to destroy them. Take a look below at how the immune system works.
How the immune system works
Throughout our body we have a network of lymphatic vessels, like we have blood veins. The network contains a liquid called lymph. The lymph helps the white blood cells kill the virus and harmful bacteria.
If the white blood cells and the lymph don´t immediately succeed in killing the virus and harmful bacteria, we get sick.
But our body has one more weapon for the fight: It can turn up the temperature of our body; we get a fever. This means we get a temperature above 38° C and our skin will be chilly and pale or quite the opposite, burning hot and we sweat. We can also get the chills, we can feel sick and we can have a head ache.
Bacteria and virus don´t like the fever, but the fever makes the white blood cells and the lymph work faster.
If our temperature exceeds 40° C our skin will be red.
If our temperature exceeds 42,6° C we can die, because the high temperature destroys important substances throughout our body.
FACTS
If your body is healthy and strong it will normally kill most of the virus and harmful bacteria, that enters your body. White blood cells and lymph do most of the job, but fever can assist as well
Eat healthy food and drink clean water, so that your stomach and intestines feel good. Healthy food and clean water do not contain harmful bacteria and virus. When you don´t have a stomach ache, when your stools are fine and you don´t have a fever, your body is normally fit for fight.
Healthy food is well prepared food. Vegetables must be washed with clean (boiled) water and meat must be boiled or fried.
Drinking water must be boiled.
Click here to see the food pyramid
The food at the bottom of the pyramid should be the main part of your diet, while the things in the tiny triangle at the top you should only enjoy occasionally.
The food between the top and the bottom is healthy, but you should not eat too much of it.
By the way, a very important part of your everyday diet is missing in the pyramid. Which one? Take a guess and find afterwards the right answer by pressing this button.
Your muscles like to be used to walking, running, cooking, cleaning, singing and dancing, but not too much. How do you know, when it is too much? It´s too much when the nerves send messages to your head, that tells you, that it hurts. You can feel it if you make too many push-ups.
If you don´t use your muscles they get weak. If you for instance break an arm, you will find that the muscles of the broken arm very soon are reduced until you are able to use them again.
Don´t harm your fine inner organs. If you smoke tobacco or drink too much alcohol your liver, your heart, your kidneys and your nerves are affected, so that they after a while make you sick. Look at these videos:
What happens after smoking 60 cigarettes?
Smoking is harmful
How do you know what to do and what not to do?
Listen to your body! It´s so wise!
What does your body tell you?
FACTS
Your body gives you all the information you need to know, it tells you whether you are well or not
Listen to your body and act on what it is telling you. That´s the key to your good health
WHAT`S NEXT
But most people are not healthy all the time. They get sick. We now turn to how we get sick and how your body reacts to that. Go to chapter 3.