Thats right men, women have more germs

We all remember when we were back in school and everyone was running around screaming cooties, and the boys didn't want a girl to touch him in fear of getting cooties.... Well there might have been some logic to it....

Apparently women have a greater variety of bacteria than men do... Women have a greater variety of bacteria on their hands than men do, a study has found.. And everybody has more types of bacteria than researchers expected to find. The researchers aren't sure why women harbor a bigger variety of bacteria than men, but it might have something to do with the acidity of their skin...

Men generally have more acidic skin than women. Other possibilities include differences in sweat and oil gland production, the frequency of moisturizer or cosmetics applications, skin thickness and hormone production.....

So, the question remains, should guys worry about holding hands with girls???? It mostly depends on which girl... Keep in mind that the vast majority of the bacteria we have on our bodies are either harmless or beneficial.... the pathogens are a small minority.... The researchers took samples from 51 college students and tested the samples using a system for detecting bacteria DNA. they identified 4,742 species of bacteria, only 5 of which were on every hand...

The study was in Monday's 11-4-08 online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.... The average hand harbored 150 species of bacteria. The left and right hands of the same individual shared only about 17 percent of the same bacteria types, the researchers found.

While the researchers emphasized the importance of regular hand-washing, they also noted that washing did not eliminate bacteria.. Either the bacterial colonies rapidly re-establish after hand-washing, or washing... does not remove the majority of bacteria taxa found on the skin surface.....