BLIS to the rescue

BLIS throat lozenges contain millions of bacteria which can help kill off throat infections.

Transcript

Cathy Buntting: Today, when we think about invaders, we are going to think about another way that our bodies might be able to be helped in fighting the sore throat bad bacteria. And we are going to need a bit help from our Supervader.

Supervader today brought in this blue-looking bacteria. What happens is in your sore throat, you've had the bad bacteria divide. And they are growing away, living in your throat. And you can take antibiotics, but if the antibiotics don't work, maybe you take this new concoction which is called BLIS. And they are bit like the ordinary throat lozenges that you can take. And they also have a hundred million good bacteria in them.

So this blue represents a good BLIS bacteria. And what happens is that this BLIS bacteria is now in your throat because you've sucked the lozenge and all those little BLIS bacteria attach to your throat. And the BLIS bacteria fight the bad throat bacteria. Now there are several ways they can do it, part of that is just that as the BLIS one grows and divides, it pushes out the other bacteria. There is just no space. Another thing is that the Blis bacteria eats pretty similar food, so it starts competing for food with the bad bacteria. The third thing is that the BLIS bacteria actually produce chemicals which kill off the bad bacteria. So in this case, we’ve had an example where we have used the BLIS good bacteria to invade our bodies to fight the bad sore throat bacteria.