The 411- All You Need To Know About Food Poisoning – The Bacteria That Causes It, Their Symptoms, And How To Prevent It – 12 Prevention Tips

Food poisoning is very common, and everyone reading this has likely had it several times, though you may not always connect it to your food since the symptoms can vary greatly. Mostly when I have had food poisoning, my symptoms were fairly mild; they were limited to a headache and an extra trip to the bathroom. So, if I did not pay careful attention to all of the changes happening within my body when I ate, I would not have likely ever connected my sickness to the food that I ate. 

Recently, I had one of my worst bouts of food poisoning. The symptoms were severe, so I felt that I might have to get my stomach pumped. I had everything from knife-like pains going through my stomach, to diarrhea that lasted days, body weakness, fatigue, and constant nausea. So, my sickness was definitely caused by food poisoning. Plus, the symptoms started only a few hours after my last meal, so the cause was very obvious to me. So today, I want to use my experience to teach you about food poisoning and to give you some tips to help you avoid it in the future. 

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Food poisoning is caused by parasites, germs, bacteria, mold, and fungi found in foods and liquids that people and animals eat.

Some bacteria that commonly cause food poisoning are Salmonella, E.coli, staph, shigella, Vibrio, listeria, botulism, Clostridium, Campylobacter, and Yersinia. 

When it comes to fungi, you will most likely be exposed to them when you eat vegetables, fruits, and bread such as undercooked mushrooms (a lot of pizza places serve you very undercooked mushrooms, so be wary of this), moldy fruits, and vegetables (especially lettuces, and things like kale, spinach, raspberries, blackberries, and apples), and pastries like muffins that will grow mold inside of them when kept at room temperature since they are moist.

Fungi and mold can have common food poisoning symptoms, but they can also cause severe health conditions like cancer, asthma episodes/breathing difficulties, liver disease, ringworm, candida, Meningitis, Pneumonia, sinus and eye problems, and many other health conditions. 

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You are all likely familiar with some of the most common food poisoning symptoms, but here is a more extensive list so that you can see how greatly food poisoning symptoms can vary:

1. Headaches
2. Stomachache
3. Diarrhea
4. Fever
5. Chill
6. Major Stomach Bloating and Swelling
7. Nausea
8. Throwing Up/Vomiting
9. Dizziness/Room Seems To Spin
10. Body Weakness and Extreme Tiredness
11. Massive Sweating
12. No Desire To Eat
13. Frequent Intense Burping
14. Frequent Farting/Flatulence
15. Cramps
16. Fuzzy Cloudy Vision
17. Feeling Hot and Cold
18. Lung, Joint, and Heart Pain
19. Pain In Your Bladder Region After Eating

 

 

Food poisoning is common today since many people like to eat out or their food is prepared by someone else, such as a family member, a friend, or a nurse. Not everyone knows about food safety and it is not forced upon people the way that it should be. So, the best thing that you can do to avoid food poisoning is to protect yourself through preventive methods. 

 

Tip 1: Request meat to be cooked well-done when ordering at restaurants.

Tip 2: Do not order meat in restaurants that are extremely overcrowded.

When a restaurant is too crowded, chefs are pressured to get the food out as quickly as possible, so there is a very high chance that the food that comes out will be undercooked. Undercooked meats especially can make you sick, so go for vegetables or pasta dishes in overly crowded restaurants. It is safer this way.

Tip 3: If in doubt about the quality of the food, do not order meat. Instead, you can take the meat home to cook it longer. 

Tip 4: Avoid all salads and pork when eating at restaurants.

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Most of the time, restaurants do not know how to properly clean lettuce and raw vegetables, so I never trust salad in restaurants. When it comes to pork, it has to be cooked for two hours to be safe to eat. In today’s fast world, the focus is on getting as much profit as possible by popping food out as quickly as possible to reach more customers, so you should not trust pork in restaurants since it can not be cooked for hours to meet the standards of fast food. 

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Tip 5: Keep a small bottle of colloidal silver in your purse or bag for emergencies when you feel sick after eating.

Tip 6: Check the reviews before eating at a new restaurant. You will be surprised by how often people will say they got food poisoning after eating at the restaurant, they saw roaches in the restaurant, or the restaurant was very dirty. As a general rule, I avoid restaurants that are not very clean or that have poor hygiene standards because I know I may get sick from the food.  

When people have really bad experiences at a restaurant, such as food poisoning, they often mention it in the reviews. When people see things like rats, mice, or roaches in a restaurant, they also tend to mention it in the comments, so always skim the bad reviews for these things to make sure that a restaurant is fit to eat at. 

Tip 7: When cooking meat at home, keep raw meat separate and away from cooked foods. 

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Tip 8: Never touch raw meat with your bare hands. 

Tip 9: Always change your gloves when going from touching raw meats to touching cleaned foods. 

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Tip 10: Cook meats at home fully for a long time. You do not have to burn the meat, but cook it until it is on the border of being overcooked. 

Tip 11: Avoid beers on tap. 

During the summer, flies and gnats are a problem. They get into restaurants when the door opens each time someone comes in. So it is an easy thing for these small insects to crawl into the hole in the tap that they are very attracted to that the beer comes out of since it is uncovered all the time. As a result, beer on tap is an easy source of water-borne illness. 

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Furthermore, if a restaurant has roaches, they may crawl into the tap as well, which can make you deathly ill. So as a general rule, beer on tap may be very cheap, but this cheapness can come with a deadly cost, so I recommend avoiding it. 

Tip 12: Boost your immune system so that when food poisoning occurs, your body is better able to deal with it. 

Food poisoning can kill you, so you want your body to be as strong as possible so that you experience the symptoms as mildly as possible. Boosting your immune system will only benefit you. It will make your body more able to fight germs and bacteria, and it can give you a better quality of life for a long time.