The Intelligent Writing on International Finance Blog

Most people think that the only way to contract botulism is through tainted food or improperly canned foods.  While that is one of the more commonly known ways to get infected, it’s actually one of the rarer ways that we get botulism these days.  Food practices and healthcare are just too good now for the bacteria to survive in canned goods and prepared foods.

In fact, one of the most common ways to contract botulism is as a newborn in the intestinal tract.  As humans we have a lot of beneficial bacteria that help us digest our foods.  In infants these bacteria have not had the time to propagate fully, so when a malicious bacteria is present it has a lot more room to breathe, so to speak.  That makes the intestines a breeding ground for the Clostridium botulinum bacteria.  Infants shouldn’t be fed anything that contains honey because it’s one of the bigger risk foods for botulism.  After a year however, you can feed your child all the honey in the world.
As for adults, the most common way to get botulism is actually through a broken skin injury.  In the last few decades as the use of drugs like heroin and other injectable substances, botulism through wounds has risen.  Without proper disinfection it’s a lot more common to get botulism through a wound than food.  Fortunately if you’re not a hard drug user your risk level goes way down, and you would have to be extremely unlucky to contract it through a regular injury as that would mean that the bacteria would need to be present wherever you got the injury.
If you do happen to get infected, botulism symptoms are very distinctive and arrive in as short as six hours.  If you notice any difficulty moving the muscles in your face you can safely conclude that you’ve contracted botulism and should get medical help immediately.  If the toxin progresses through your system you will start having a hard time swallowing and eventually lose control of all of your voluntary muscles.  The last effect that botulism will have on your body will be to shut down your respiratory system, leading to a quick death unless you are put on a respirator immediately.

Fortunately recovering from botulism is fairly easy so long as you identify the toxin early.  If you let it progress, you can suffer from nerve problems for up to a year after technically recovering.  Other lasting symptoms include a slight paralysis in some facial muscles for a while after the toxin has left your symptom.  After a while all of these drop away and you’ll be back to normal, but not without learning a serious and important lesson about your own health.  Knowing common diseases and how to prevent and diagnose them quickly is a skill that could save your life or the life of someone you know – it’s a good idea to get educated.  Botulism can be completely eradicated if we all take a little time to educate.