I think about this a lot, especially since they had me take so many antibiotics when I had diverticulitis. They gave me another prescription and told me to take them for the h. pylori in my intestine, but I can’t bring myself to do it:
In the United States, 2 million people are infected with drug-resistant “superbugs” every year, and at least 23,000 die as a result. Such numbers, journalist Maryn McKenna suggests, will seem trivial if we reach the point when all antibiotics are no longer effective — something that’s on track to become a reality.
Considering the full implications of a post-antibiotic era, McKenna concludes that it wouldn’t be so different from the apocalypse. And to know what we’re facing, we need only look at where we’ve come from:
Before antibiotics, five women died out of every 1,000 who gave birth. One out of nine people who got a skin infection died, even from something as simple as a scrape or an insect bite. Three out of ten people who contracted pneumonia died from it. Ear infections caused deafness; sore throats were followed by heart failure. In a post-antibiotic era, would you mess around with power tools? Let your kid climb a tree? Have another child?
To start with, McKenna writes, the loss of antibiotics will mean the end of modern medicine as we know it, impeding everything from surgery to chemotherapy to the far more prosaic:
At UCLA, [Dr. Brad] Spellberg treated a woman with what appeared to be an everyday urinary-tract infection — except that it was not quelled by the first round of antibiotics, or the second. By the time he saw her, she was in septic shock, and the infection had destroyed the bones in her spine. A last-ditch course of the only remaining antibiotic saved her life, but she lost the use of her legs. “This is what we’re in danger of,” he says. “People who are living normal lives who develop almost untreatable infections.”
I know some other countries put an all-out effort to cut antibiotic use (I think Norway was one) and made great strides. If only we could do that here.
Big Pharma in the U.S. is a Capitalist construct. Norway is a Socialist country. One group is motivated by profit. The other is motivated by altruism. Would anyone care to guess which is which? We, as a society, are holding the knife to our own throats and the profiteers are daring us to use it.
For your readers’ consideration – link to an article describing an alternative, sustainable view to emerging system of health care:
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-11-20/fertile-health-parallels-between-sustainable-agriculture-and-sustainable-medicine
a few excerpts – “…In order for people to be healthy in the long term, nearly every other aspect of life comes into play. When people thrive, you can generally look around and see that the natural environment around them has been well cared for, their relationships are solid, they have abundant, nutrient-dense food to eat, a just society to live in, and they are living in relatively peaceful times. We now also know that we rely heavily on communities of beneficial bacteria in and on our bodies for physical and emotional health, immunity and even proper development…”
“…Both agriculture and medicine shifted away from what I would call a “fertile” model, and towards a more “sterile” one, that competed with, or killed off, what was not wanted…”
“…The industrial farming model—in which we put an animal in a box, away from its natural environment, give it antibiotics and hormones and then try to determine what nutrients it needs to be maximally productive, or we put a seed into “sterilized” dirt, kill off all the weeds and bugs with chemicals, and try to figure out what artificial fertilizer the seed needs to be maximally productive—is strangely similar to the industrial medical model…”
“…Ironically, modern health-care itself, practiced in the context of the for-profit growth economy, has become a contributor to our health-care problems. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, adverse reactions to pharmaceutical drugs properly administered are estimated to be somewhere between the fourth and sixth leading cause of death in the United States…”
“…The future of health care, from what I can see, involves stepping out of the for-profit model and returning to the commons of care…
…No matter what political system one believes in for the larger society, profit motives have little or no usefulness in the ecology of care…”
Ms. Madrak – Clearly you can do your own research into this vital matter for you, and discuss it with medical personnel you trust. But a quick scan of the subject of antibiotic treatment of h. pylori, and possible supplemental treatment with probiotic sources – it seems to indicate that the probiotics help with eradication by, among other things, lessening the nasty side-effects of treatment by antibiotics only – plus exerting some positive, natural eradication benefits of their own.
A few links:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/217533.php
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/137/3/812S.full
http://www.saudijgastro.com/article.asp?issn=1319-3767;year=2013;volume=19;issue=3;spage=113;epage=120;aulast=Dajani
The good news is that when this hits an actual Congresscreeper, they’ll go “ZOMG! We have to do something about this!” and outlaw agricultural antibiotics except for actual diseases as well as outlaw prescription antibiotics for anything except actual bacterial diseases.
It’s metabolically expensive for bacteria to maintain resistance, so without a constant stream of antibiotics hammering them, they lose it.
After twenty or thirty years or so (maybe less, maybe more, I’m just guessing) the silver bullets will start to work again. For whoever is left by then.
First just get off all glutens. Bread, cereal, etc. Go on Gerber’s baby cereal of rice. That’s the first thing given to babies after weaning or while weaning. Try for 2 days eating ONLY that. If you feel better, then you know. It is gluten. From there you can take it.