Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

Yachtold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcult.co.

.jp. That's Y-A-K-U-L-T.C-O.J-P. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacult. For Scientific American Science quickly, I'm Rachel Feltman.

With everything from bird flu to neurovirus making headlines these days, it can feel like the world is just packed with dangerous pathogens we need protection from.

What if we could get a hand from an all-natural disinfectant that was more than 100 times more effective than bleach,

but so gentle and safe that you could spray it into your eyes.

It might sound like the sort of quackery you'd get sold in a shady Facebook group, but such a compound really does exist. It's called hypochlorous acid. And in addition to all of those awesome qualities I just

listed, it's also cheap. Plus, you can make it at home. So why don't we use it for like everything?

Here to explain is Jen Schwartz, a senior features editor for Scientific American. Jen, thanks so much

for coming on to chat today.

Thanks for having me.

So you wrote a piece about hypochloric acid, which I feel like I've been seeing everywhere lately.

So let's start with the obvious.

What is this compound?

So it's so fascinating to me that you say you've been seeing it everywhere because when I

had this idea, which really came a few years ago, I thought that no one knew about this. But I became aware of it in answering what this thing is. It's a disinfectant. And it is something that is made in our bodies. It is part of how our white blood cells fight infection. They go to like a wound

that you have and they release biocides, including hypochlorous acid, that just goes and like

dismantles bad things that you don't want pathogens and rips the, you know, cell walls apart

and dismantles the DNA.

So it's an extremely effective disinfectant made in the body.

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