I am an esthetician and want to understand the science. If OTC amounts of hypo. acid are so effective at killing pathogens on the skin by damaging the cell wall, etc., then why doesn’t it harm skim cells as well through the same mechanism?
In: Biology
It does, but you’re protected in a way single-celled life isn’t.
You are not one thing. You are legion, and you have scales like tenfold shields: your outer layer of dead cells. *Those* chemically break down. The bacteria have no such armor. Their fresh, living cells are right there, touching the acid, slurping it up. This kills them.
Now, if you *drank* that hypochlorous acid, that would be a different story! That would be you doing to yourself what the bacteria does to itself.
This is one of the many advantages of being a multicellular organism. Even the dead legions may still serve the whole. But you then become weak to things that can’t affect single cells, like cancer; lone wolf cells can’t be betrayed by their own.
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