 Here everybody Dr. O here very important video we're going to talk about biofilms. So let's just kind of get out of the way of what they are and then we'll talk about why they're so significant. So here you see a couple images of biofilms you really see that kind of that slimy it's called an extracellular polymeric substance or EPS but this basically this this gooey sticky substance is secreted into the environment and microbes can live in and underneath it. So I like to say that the capsule that a single organism can produce is actually shockingly similar to a biofilm. So biofilm is basically think about a capsule over a group of organisms. So biofilms can be good or bad. We don't talk about the good ones very often but they're absolutely they're absolutely are essential really really good biofilms but our big focus is on the bad ones because the over one majority of infectious diseases are caused by biofilm forming organisms. So that's what it is. Don't worry so much about the EPS but you have this this basically goo of you know carbohydrates with some proteins and even nucleic acids and DNA and everything mixed together even like old cell fragments from dead cells would be in there but it's just this coating that cover these covers these organisms. So why do they matter so much. Well number one since we're probably dealing with the one the negative ones organisms that are in a biofilm are up to a thousand times harder to kill with antibiotics and there's several theories about that some of them are actually hiding from the antibiotics and hiding from your immune system but also some of the cells that are deep in this community of this biofilm are they greatly slow their metabolism and most of your antibiotics work by destroying cells that are metabolically active. That's why you got to take antibiotics for tuberculosis for six to 12 months because it's such a slow organism. Well these organisms kind of turn down their metabolism when they're hiding in a biofilm. Number one they're just much harder to kill with antibiotics or anything else. Number two while they're in there they're sharing nutrients think about like so basically the organisms that use oxygen are creating an anaerobic environment for the ones that don't want oxygen or the ones that the ones that produce methane gas are feeding the ones that like methane gas and all these kind of things. So basically the waste products or byproducts of one organism become the food of another so they're sharing nutrition and food making them healthier. They're also they're hiding they're sharing food but they're also sharing DNA. So imagine the amount of horizontal gene transfer or genetic swapping that occurs inside a biofilm. So when organisms come out of a biofilm they are generally hardier and more dangerous than when they went in. So that's why they're so significant. The other reason I'd say they're very very significant is if you're dealing with a biofilm infection if you don't kill all of them killing 99% of the organisms hiding in a biofilm is not enough because they will just quickly come back. The best two examples I can give you would be you know persistent chronic urinary tract infection so if you've ever had a patient that has a UTI every four weeks every six weeks whatever they have one right they have one UTI. You treat it with antibiotics it kills as many of the cells as it can to control the symptoms but since you can't didn't eradicate the biofilm didn't eradicate all the organisms living in it they just pop back up. So four weeks later it's the same urinary tract infection it's just you're hammering it down it pops back up. Another example would be strep throat like people that have strep once or twice every year until they get their tonsils removed and then all of a sudden they don't have strep very often or maybe not at all well you can make a very strong argument that there's a biofilm on the tonsils that is a breeding ground for the strep infection. So you're actually physically removing the biofilm when you take some of these tonsils out. Another example would be SIBO small intestinal bacterial overgrowth studies have shown that you you can put some on antibiotics for like eight months and you can see their symptoms disappear but then when they get off antibiotics within two weeks it looks like you never treated them. So this is why biofilm so biofilms are this protection for communities of organisms and these are the many reasons why they're so they're so important. All right I think I'll stop there and actually do a separate video about biofilm formation because that's important but I don't like the videos to get too long so that this is what a biofilm is and why we should care so much about them. All right have a wonderful day be blessed.