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Sleeping with the enemy
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| July 15, 2002. |
In general, the common human being
only pays attention to those objects and events he can
perceive with the senses within his spatial scale of
sizes, especially when it comes to what he can see.
This macroscopic view of his environment causes him
to give less importance or ignore those events that
occur on a small size scale and - although it may seem
ridiculous - control the rhythm of his life in a significant
way.
Without knowing it, every time we
go to bed, we expose our body to a myriad microscopic
organisms whose shapes are fabulous or even monstrous,
that play on our skin, make love in the bushes of our
eyebrows and delight themselves by feeding on the juices
and fragments our skin sloughs off as a result of its
biological functions during the daytime. At times, these
little subjects, besides rendering a maintenance service
to the body, can also cause health problems so we may
say that, without knowing it, every night we are in
fact …sleeping with the enemy, the mite.
Mites are animals that are relatives
of spiders. Despite the fact that they are common and
numerous (nearly 30,000 known species), they are practically
unknown by man. This may be due to their small size
that enables them to pass unnoticed although they can
be found everywhere: from altitudes as high as 15,000
feet) to depths that reach 4,000 meters (12,000 feet),
passing through coastlines, volcanic areas, rivers,
lakes, polar regions, deserts and forests.
The most well known forms of mites
are the ticks, obviously because of their relatively
large size and because they are parasites of domestic
animals whose blood they suck for various days in order
to feed themselves. Ticks can suck their victims' blood
because their saliva contains an anti-coagulant that
stops fluids from coagulating while they feed.
However, it is precisely the tick's
saliva which contains a bacteria that can infect its
host and cause an illness called Lyme's Disease that
produces symptoms similar to those of the flu and which,
if not treated properly and in time, can lead to arthritis,
lesions of the central nervous system and alterations
in the cardiac rhythm, encephalitis and meningitis.
The most efficient form of prevention is often a careful
examination of the body and removal of the ticks after
spending time in wooded or jungle regions. Insect repellents
may be efficient and may help prevent this.
But most mites are so minuscule
that they are not even noticed by their hosts. Some
are so small that an entire colony of them can fit into
a flea's ear. Others live in flowers and they pass from
there to the beak of a hummingbird or to the body of
a bumblebee for them to transport it to another flower,
in search of new feeding grounds.
Yet another type of mite lives in
garden or field ants. They hang from their jaws and
grab on with six of their hooked legs. With the remaining
two, that are much longer than the rest, they stimulate
the ant's antennae using the same code they use to communicate
with others of its species, to convince it to regurgitate
a drop of food. Thus the mite gets its food for free.
As we mentioned above, there are
great colonies of mites living on our bodies and in
our beds that may reach densities as high as millions
of individuals that are never seen and that, in the
best of cases, do not represent any danger whatsoever.
However, there are people who may be allergic to them
and that can cause asthma attacks. That type of allergy
-better known as an allergy to household dust mites-
is produced not only by the presence of live mites,
but also by fragments of the dead ones or by their excrement
that swarms around in the dust present in our homes
where mites spend their lives feeding on what our skin
sloughs off and our nasal and auditory secretions waste
products.
On the other hand, the food we store
in our kitchens shelters an endless number of mites
that feed on products derived from plants. Involuntarily,
many of them end up forming part of our menu. Nevertheless,
many others are deliberately added to our food to transform
it into culinary delicacies. Such is the case with certain
cheeses that are fermented by mites, products for which
the demand is so high that finding any at the supermarket
is practically impossible.
Even so, a great part of the history
of mites is yet to be written and the revelation of
its mysteries represents a rich potential source of
information that is most assuredly related to our success
as a species on the face of the earth.
cupul@pvmirror.com
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