Regular exercise and a balanced diet are needed to keep the body healthy.

Too little food

leads to a person being underweight and prone to certain types of illness, while too much
food and not enough exercise leads to a person being overweight and other types of ill
health.

Nutrients
A mixture of different types of food in the correct amounts is needed to maintain health.
The main food groups are carbohydrates, fats and proteins.
This table summarises some typical sources of these nutrients and why our bodies need
them.

The main food groups

Food group

Found in

Needed by our bodies for:

Carbohydrates potatoes, pasta,

bread, bananas, sugar
and rice

a source of energy for life processes

Fats

cheese, butter,
margarine and oils

a source of energy for life processes: fats are

also needed to make cell membranes and to
insulate our bodies

Proteins

meat, fish, eggs and

cheese

growth and repair - building cells

Mineral ions and vitamins are also important in a healthy diet. They are needed in small
amounts for healthy functioning of the body.

Imbalanced diets
An imbalanced diet causes a person to become malnourished. For example:

too little food may lead to a person being underweight

too much food may lead to a person being overweight.
A poor diet may also lead to deficiency diseases. For example, too little vitamin D in the diet
can lead to rickets, which affects the proper growth of the skeleton. Type 2 diabetes is also a
problem related to poor diet

if

someones diet consists of food with a lower energy content than the amount of energy

their body uses, the person will lose body mass.

Metabolic rate

Respiration is a chemical reaction

energy from food. The metabolic
such chemical reactions take place in
because of several factors, including
factors.

that allows cells to release

rate is the speed at which
the body and varies
age, gender and inherited

Metabolic rate is also affected by

the:

proportion of muscle to fat in the body

amount of exercise and other physical activity.
The metabolic rate increases as we exercise and stays high for a while afterwards. People
who exercise regularly are usually healthier than people who don't.

A molecular model of a cholesterol molecule

Other factors affect health too, including inherited factors. For example, the cholesterol level
in the blood can affect health. Cholesterol is made in the liver and is needed for healthy cell
membranes. However, too much cholesterol in the blood increases the risk of heart disease
and diseased arteries.

Defending agenised infections

Pathogens are microorganisms - such as bacteria and viruses - that cause disease. Bacteria
release toxins, and viruses damage our cells. White blood cells can ingest and destroy
pathogens by producing antibodies that destroy the infectious microorganisms, and antitoxins
to neutralise toxins created as a by-product.

Pathogens: bacteria
Structure of a salmonella bacterium cell

Bacteria and viruses are the main types of pathogen. Bacteria are microscopic organisms.
They come in many shapes and sizes, but even the largest are only 10 micrometres long that's 10 millionths of a metre.
Bacteria are living cells and, in favourable conditions, can multiply rapidly. Once inside the
body, they release poisons or toxins that make us feel ill. Diseases caused by bacteria
include:

food poisoning
cholera
typhoid
whooping cough.

Pathogens: viruses
Viruses are many times smaller than bacteria. They are among the smallest organisms known
and consist of a fragment of genetic material inside a protective protein coat.

A hepatitis C virus showing DNA enclosed in a protein coat.

Viruses can only reproduce inside host cells and they damage the cell when they do this. A
virus can get inside a cell and, once there, take over and make hundreds of thousands of
copies of itself. Eventually the virus copies fill the whole host cell and burst it open. The
viruses are then passed out in the bloodstream, the airways, or by other routes.
Diseases caused by viruses include:

influenza (flu)
colds
measles
mumps
rubella
chicken pox
AIDs.

White blood cells

A white blood cell ingesting disease-causing bacteria.

White blood cells can:

ingest pathogens and destroy them

produce antibodies to destroy particular pathogens
produce antitoxins that counteract the toxins released by pathogens.
In a written examination, it is easy to get carried away with metaphors about invaders and
battles: stick to the point. Note that:

the pathogens are not the disease - theycause the disease

white blood cells do not eat the pathogens - they ingest them
antibodies and antitoxins are not living things - they are specialised proteins.

Immunity
Pathogens contain certain chemicals that are foreign to the body. These chemicals are
called antigens. Certain white blood cells, called lymphocytes, can produce specific antibodies
to kill a particular pathogen.

Antibodies
Antibodies are proteins. They can neutralise pathogens in a number of ways. For example,
they can:

bind to pathogens and damage or destroy them

coat pathogens, clumping them together so that they are easily ingested by white
blood cells called phagocytes.
Each lymphocyte produces a specific type of antibody - a protein that has a chemical 'fit' to a
certain antigen. When a lymphocyte with the appropriate antibody meets the antigen, the
lymphocyte reproduces quickly and makes many copies of the antibody to kill the pathogen.

Protecting against pathogens

Vaccination
Vaccination causes the body to produce enough white blood cells to protect itself against a
pathogen. Antibiotics are effective against bacteria, but not against viruses. Some strains of
bacteria are resistant to antibiotics. So people can be immunised against a pathogen through

vaccination. Different vaccines are needed for different pathogens. For example, the MMR
vaccine is used to protect children against measles, mumps and rubella (German measles).
Vaccination involves putting a small amount of an inactive form of a pathogen, or dead
pathogen, into the body.
Vaccines can contain:

live pathogens treated to make them harmless

harmless fragments of the pathogen
dead pathogens.
These all act as antigens. When injected into the body, they stimulate white blood cells to
produce antibodies against the pathogen. If the person does get infected by the pathogen
later, their body can respond in the same way as if they had had the disease before. If a large
proportion of the population is immune to a particular pathogen, the spread of that pathogen
is greatly reduced.

hygiene
One simple way to reduce the risk of infection is to maintain personal hygiene and to keep
hospitals clean. In the 19th century, Ignaz Semmelweiss realised the importance of
cleanliness in hospitals. Semmelweiss insisted that doctors should wash their hands before
examining patients, something that was not common at the time. This policy greatly reduced
the number of deaths from infectious diseases in his hospital. Unfortunately, although his
ideas were successful, they were ignored at the time because people did not know that
diseases were caused by pathogens that could be killed.

Medicines
Some medicines help to relieve the symptoms of a disease while others kill the infectious
pathogens.

Painkillers

Painkillers like paracetamol and aspirin are available 'over-the-counter' at pharmacies.

Painkillers helps to relieve the symptoms of an infectious disease, but they do not kill the
pathogens involved. For example, paracetamol, aspirin and morphine block nerve impulses

from the painful part of the body, or block nerve impulses travelling to the part of the brain
responsible for perceiving pain.

Antibiotics

A bacterium damaged and distorted by penicillin

Antibiotics are substances that kill bacteria or stop their growth. They do not work against
viruses because they live and reproduce inside cells. It is difficult to develop drugs that kill
viruses without also damaging the bodys tissues.
Penicillin, the first antibiotic, was discovered in 1928 by Alexander Fleming. He noticed that
some bacteria he had left in a Petri dish had been killed by naturally occurring penicillium
mould. Since the discovery of penicillin, many other antibiotics have been discovered and
developed.
Different antibiotics work in different ways. It is important that specific bacteria should be
treated using specific antibiotics. This table gives some examples (you do not need to
remember this information).

How some common antibiotics work

Antibiotic

How it works

penicillin

breaks down cell walls

erythromycin

stops protein synthesis

ciprofloxacin

stops DNA replication

The use of antibiotics has prevented many deaths from infectious bacterial diseases.

Antibiotic resistance
Bacterial strains can develop resistance to antibiotics. This happens because of natural
selection. In a large population of bacteria, there may be some cells that are not affected by
the antibiotic. These cells survive and reproduce, producing even more bacteria that are not
affected by the antibiotic.

MRSA
MRSA is the acronym for 'methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus'. It's very dangerous
because it's a strain of bacterium that is resistant to most antibiotics. To slow down or stop

avoid the unnecessary use of antibiotics

complete the full course.

The appearance of resistant strains of bacteria means that vaccinations and antibiotics may
no longer work. As people are not immune to it, and there is no effective treatment, a
resistant strain will spread rapidly. New antibiotics must be developed as a result.

Growing microorganisms in the lab

E. coli bacteria (Photo from Rocky Mountain Laboratories, NIAID, NIH)

In 1878 Robert Koch discovered how to grow bacteria in a Petri dish (named after his
assistant Julius Petri). He was able to discover which bacteria caused certain diseases,
including TB and cholera. Scientists still grow microorganisms in the lab so that they can be
investigated.

Culturing microorganisms
The action of antibiotics and disinfectants can be investigated using cultures of
microorganisms (populations of microorganisms that have been grown for a purpose). It is
important that the cultures are uncontaminated by other microorganisms, so sterile
conditions are needed:

the Petri dishes, nutrient agar jelly and other culture media must be sterilised
the inoculating loops used to transfer microorganisms must be sterilised (usually
by passing the metal loop through a Bunsen burner flame)
the lid of the Petri dish is sealed with sticky tape to stop microorganisms from the
air getting in and contaminating the culture.

Safety in the lab

Bacteria grow and reproduce more quickly when they are warm than when they are cold. It
would be dangerous to incubate (keep and grow) cultures at temperatures close to body
temperature (37C) because doing so might allow the growth of pathogens harmful to health.
So the maximum temperature used in school and college labs is 25C. However, higher
temperatures can be used industrially, and these produce faster growth.