For those of you that practice contact martial arts or other contact sports, especially if you grapple, you should be aware of the increasing prevalence of staph infections, especially MRSA:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,302299,00.html

Prevention:

http://www.staphaseptic.com/spp.html

I'd never seen anyone contract a staph infection from martial arts training in the previous 30 years. In the last 6 months, I've seen 8 cases.

hygiene is cool.

the stinky gi guy is no longer funny.

Tim, where did you see these infections? at your school? Any pattern to who was infected, or was it simply not taking care to follow the recommendations in the link you provided?

Do you find that people with eruptions/rashes etc. come work out anyways (before they heal)? or is it more that people are infectious without visible signs (as apparently herpes can be)?

I've had several occasions where people from outside my school have infected my students with skin to skin contact.

One of my students was training in a Thai Boxing academy and got the infection from kicking their Thai pads.

Staph often starts with small pimples, or something that looks like an ingrown hair, and then gets larger, red and often hot to the touch. It gets worse from there.

http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/md/cdc/staph/index.html

If someone suspects they have staph, they should immediately discontinue training with others and seek medical attention.

Tim,
Kudos on protecting your students'health. My wife is an epidemiologist and routinely works on this and other infectious disease outbreaks. CA (community acquired) staph recently made the leap from hospitals to the general public, accounting for much of the recent increase. This is the variety that is most virulent and anti-biotic resistant. I'm sure your state's health department has an anonymous infection incident reprting form. Providing the epidemiologists with info and/or samples helps tracking, treatment, and prevention, so please report any suspected staph infections. Reporting and early treatment provide the best chances of typing the dna fingerprint and getting a positive outcome. More info can be had at our state's website:
http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/idepc/diseases/staph/index.html

Also, remember that bleach kills everything, so wash your training kit after every practice with bleach. Cheers

Thanks for the info Karl.

What kind of products are people using on their mats? Is a bleach solution a good one for cleaning the mats after class?

Bleach is probably the all-round best, cheapest, lo-tech option. It even kills norovirus...nothing else does. Color-safe bleach has the least chance of discoloring equipment and clothes. You may want to look at quats (quaternary ammonium compounds) as many hospitals use this. Do NOT combine the two: bleach plus ammonia equals poison gas and kaboom.

Also, keeping a tube of superglue on hand to close wounds or seal-over bad scrapes after irrigating with saline solution is a good first line defense against intrusion of all kind of nasty things. Human sweat is the solvent for superglue, so you don't have to worry about opening the wound later for repair. We used to use that all the time in MSF.

Tim:
And community.

There is nothing new to Staff infections. One of the normal bacteria that grows on your skin- the normal flora- is Staphylococcus Aureas, when this get into or under the outer skin layer it becomes disease causing. The newness to the Staff infection is the increasing resistance to Antibiotics. Methacillian (Penicillin)resistant Staff Aureas was first isolated in 1961.

Today there are two distinct strains of MRSA hospital acquired and Community acquired. Hospital acquired is a real monster, some being resistant to all antibiotics including IV Vancomycin and IV Gentimycin. This is not the case for Community acquired. If you or your student find that the have "spider bites" the common name for the boils associated with MRSA then see a MD and request aggressive decolonization. Usually a 14 day prescription with Bactrum and Doxycycline or Bactrum and Rifampin and twice daily or more application of triple antibiotic ointment in the nares is the only acceptable approach.
Remember that the SA bacteria is excellent at building and passing on resistance R-factor, if you "roll" with colononized individuals symptomatic or not your skin to skin contact can mix floras and the non-resistant bacteria will learn from the colonized bacteria. Basically the MRSA trait can be passed along without symptoms then when when the formally non resistant flora get under the skin it will not respond to traditional Penicillin ABx (Keflex) or Mono-Therapy (one antibiotic of another class).
Today unlike 1961 the resistance is so common that it is no longer considered prudent not to be treated as I have recommended above.

Now before aggressive decolonization of the players that may or may not be 100% effective the best way to prevent the spread of bacterial resistance is to avoid skin to skin contact; argument for wearing clean gi's.
To prevent the normal Staff flora resistant or not from becoming pathonegenic: preventing it from getting into the skin is required. Again wearing of clothing rash guards and basically anything that will prevent mat burns, cuts or abrasions is what we can do.
Bleach is a good disinfectant for viruses however it will not kill Pseudomonas Aeruginousa a very virile bacteria that is pathogenic and can live in bleach bottles. I recommend a disinfectant cleaner that is manufactured for killing fungi, MRSA, viruses and Pseudomonas. I do not recommend Ammonia, howeb=ver if the comercial disenfectant is not avalible you can give it a try.
I will also mention here that surfaces such as carpeted sports floors are not acceptable for ground work.
If you have any questions plese email my directly
Jamie

Pleas forgive the typos
I did attempt to edit the above post but met with the all more frequent 500 error.
Also feel free to post OR email me direct, if you have personal questions.

thanks
Jamie

another option may be the under-armour condom- suit up.

I dislike using bleach on my good gis because it eats the fabric up fast.

Thanks Jamie.

You are very welcome, I wish you could have gotten the edited version.
furthermore
I am very busy these days and may not have computer access for a week but I will answer questions when I'm back, if there are any..
Also I hope to find time to get my copy of:
CHIN NA FA
Traditional Chinese Submission Grappling
signed by the Translator Brazillian Jiu Jitsu Champion Tim Cartmell, when I can actually take a day off and visit Shen Wu

With all my best intentions
Jamie

jamie,

how is sensei iizumi doing?

still teaching? sorry for hijacking this thread.

Thanks for the info on staph, i'll be sure to avoid the stinky gi guy.

Sensei Iizumi is doing fine
He will be at San Diego Dojo on Tuesday and Thursday nights if you are interested in seeing for yourself...

Also NPR.com has some mild interesting and somewhat factual information on MRSA basically it does not live on inanamate objects (fomites) for very long if at all and disinfecting entire schools is a fool-hardy (hysterical) attempt at containing the spread of an outbreak, unless some fresh puss or infected drainage is on the fomite.
MRSA is colonized on us not the furniture.
Showers, handwashing and meticulous hygine are at the core of habits to prevent infection. As well as not "rolling" when your sick with anything, especially a rash or boil.
I hope everybody is well- however I suspect the MRSA cat is out of the bag and many of us are already colonized with community aquired MRSA and just like the non-resistant staph that the rest are colonized with it just has not gotten under the skin and become infectious.
By the way Staph in the bloodstream is deadly whether or not it is drug resistant. Staph sepsis can be treated and death avioded except the hospital aquired SuperBug that now exist; resisistant to Vancomycin and Gentamycin, if any of us gets that the prognosis is grave.
anyway I hope all are well and the smoke and fire is not burning you.
with all my best intentions
Jamie