Showing posts with label Infection. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Infection. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

A Possible Answer to Ebola?

English: Ozone therapy for dental application ...
English: Ozone therapy for dental application (Photo credit: Wikipedia)


By Dr. Mercola
Ebola is heavily featured in the news these days, bringing lots of fear and concerns. Can anything be done to successfully treat or prevent this horrific and highly lethal disease?
Dr. Robert Rowen who is a leading expert on oxidative therapy, offers an intriguing answer in this interview. By invitation of the President of Sierra Leone, he’s going there to teach health care workers how to treat Ebola using ozone.
“I do ozone, ultraviolet blood irradiation therapy, and high-dose vitamin C,”he explains. “All of these collectively belong to a family of therapies called oxidative therapies.
In my opinion – and I’ve been doing them longer than any other living person in North America; since 1986 – especially ozone and ultraviolet [therapies] are among the most powerful therapies for healing across the board of anything I’ve ever seen in my career... It does so by stimulating your own body to heal.”

Ozone Effectively Inactivates Viruses

Ozone is quite versatile, as you can administer it in many different ways. It’s extraordinary in terms of its anti-infective and antiviral action, and it has virtually no toxicity, making it a prime candidate for both prevention and treatment.
Dr. Rowen’s YouTube channel1 contains a number of videos demonstrating and discussing what these therapies can do. With bacteria, ozone works by puncturing the membrane of the bacteria, causing it to spill its contents and die. It also inactivates viruses, and does so 10 times faster than chlorine.
“I’ve told my patients and readers, please know where your closest oxidative physician is, because your life might depend on it, and if you have the wherewithal, to get an [ozone] machine to purify water.
It can be easily adapted in the privacy of your home, so that you can administer it rectally for whatever condition you have,” Dr. Rowen says. 

Ozone—The Most Powerful Natural Oxidant in the World

Chlorine is being used overseas right now for Ebola to disinfect clothes and isolation suites, etc. But ozone actually disinfects 10 times faster than chlorine. It’s the most powerful natural oxidant in the world.
Ozone also has the advantage of stimulating the immune system, and modulating it—either up or down depending on what your system requires.
“Right now, we’re faced with probably one of the most horrific epidemics human kind has ever known. That’s a virus called Ebola that is transmitted by personal contact [through] bodily fluids and, actually, it may be also be airborne,” Dr. Rowen says.
“What I don’t know – and I’m trying to investigate – is how easily it is transmitted from person to person. I’m not sure that it’s easy to get, because if it was, everybody should be dead by now in many of the villages, and not everybody is dead.
On the other hand, we know that there are aid workers who have gotten the disease and died even though they were wearing full suits...
Anybody who works with Ebola are putting their lives on the line because there are no conventional therapies for this; none, except getting supportive care...”  

How Ozone Works to Combat Infectious Disease

As noted by Dr. Rowen, Ebola hijacks your immune system and suppresses it. Once your immune system realizes the virus is there, it launches a cytokine storm, and it is this cytokine storm that leads to massive tissue destruction and capillary leakage.
This is what causes the hemorrhaging associated with Ebola. Ozone modulates the cytokine storm.
It’s anti-infective. It improves circulation and blood flow, oxygen delivery, and likely upregulates mitochondrial respiration, thereby generating more energy in your cells. Oxygen is one of the most important things your body needs for tissue healing when you’re riddled with infection.
There’s an experimental, still unapproved treatment for Ebola called ZMapp. It offers passive immunity to the virus. This is not a vaccine but three monoclonal antibodies that have been humanized by genetic engineering and grown in tobacco plants. It’s very costly and time consuming to produce and it’s not yet commercially available.
ZMapp works with your body’s immune system, slowing down the viral load to give your body enough time to respond and not get killed by the cytokine storm. It’s not really a drug in the conventional sense, as it acts simply by slowing down the virus from reaching the cells.
This is similar to ozone’s action, but ozone could potentially be more effective, as it works both indirectly and directly. It’s directly toxic to the virus while being harmless to your body’s own cells, and also indirectly enhances your immune system function. Regarding potential safety concerns of ozone, Dr. Rowen says:
“Ozone is only hard on the lungs, but it can be given in other ways. It can be given intravenously. It can be given in the bladder, in the vagina, in the rectum, via injection – anywhere. It’s just [that] it can be tough on the lungs. You don’t want to be breathing it...
Also, the way ozone can be done is dirt cheap. And in a place like Africa, where there are thousands of people with this and there’s just no money, can you imagine what it will mean to the planet if we can treat this disease with a therapy that will cost probably less than 10 dollars per patient?”

Historical Use of Oxidation Therapy Has Proven Its Benefits

While in Sierra Leone, Dr. Rowen will use ozone on himself and his team every single day to prevent contracting the disease, and will continue the treatment for some time afterward.
“I have less fear about Ebola with [ozone therapy],” Dr. Rowen says.”I mean this and I’m speaking honestly. Yes, Ebola is a fearsome disease. But I know the power of ozone and oxidative therapies. I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t have absolute confidence that we’re going to dramatically cut the death rate.”
Oxidation therapy was actually discovered during the great influenza outbreak of 1918—a time when people were dying like flies across the world. A physician in India named Dr. Oliver was treating viral influenza—which has no treatment even today—and when he administered intravenous hydrogen peroxide, which costs a couple cents to do for materials, he cut the death rate by 50 percent.
“His comment at the end of his article published in The Lancet, a major medical journal, was, ‘This is more remarkable because we only treated the worst cases.’” Dr. Rowen says.
According to Dr. Rowen, ozone therapy is also very beneficial for heart disease, immune diseases, injuries, and chronic degenerative diseases such as osteoarthritis. As an example, Dr. Rowen has found that ozone is about 85 percent effective in knees and only slightly less effective in hips, when given as an injection.
“I’m actually injecting oxygen. One percent of it is ozone O3, 99 percent of it is oxgen O2. They’re getting a blast of oxygen and they’re getting ozone. There are two effects,” Dr. Rowen explains. “(1) They’re getting oxygen, the most important thing those cells need to heal and (2) they’re getting ozone. Ozone instantly modulates the inflammation. It knocks out the excessive nitric oxide that’s in the joint. It increases other chemical mediators that reduce inflammation.”

Other Oxidation Therapies

Aside from ozone, other oxidation therapies include hydrogen peroxide, intravenous vitamin C, and ultraviolet light. Dr. Rowen has done intravenous hydrogen peroxide since 1989, and it’s very inexpensive. One drawback is that it’s hard on your veins, and can actually make your veins disappear. Ozone doesn’t do that. Ultraviolet blood irradiation therapy is another excellent modality, although it’s not quite as versatile as ozone. You can find an article discussing ultraviolet blood irradiation therapy on Dr. Rowen’s website.2, 3
“[The article] is called ‘Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation Therapy: The Cure That Time Forgot’... [Ultraviolet blood irradiation therapy] was done widespread in this country until the ‘60s. And then when you could take a pill, it was wiped out. There are political reasons why it was wiped out, too. I know that for sure. But it’s still being done,” he says.
Then there is high-dose intravenous vitamin C. While vitamin C is an antioxidant, it also promotes the production of superoxide dismutase. Dr. Rowen explains how:
“[W]hen you give high-dose vitamin C intravenously, the ascorbic acid leaves the bloodstream and goes into the interstitial fluids where a series of reactions occur that incite a greater production of superoxide dismutase, which gets converted by the body into hydrogen peroxide. When you give intravenous vitamin C, you are actually giving hydrogen peroxide.”

Ozone Therapy for Cancer

Still, ozone therapy is a superior approach to all these other alternatives. Dr. Rowen has even used it for cancer, and while not a magic bullet, it has successfully reversed some cases of cancer, including metastatic cancer. It’s important to realize the outcome varies from individual to individual, and most are also implementing dietary and supplement protocols. He notes:
“There are articles out there where ozone therapy is recommended now by many people as a potential treatment for cancer. Why? Because tumors are hypoxic. Hypoxic means low oxygen. The research is showing that the more enrichment of oxygen you can get into the tumor, the better it’s going to behave. And ozone increases oxygenation of the body.
If you get more oxygen into the tumor, you’re going to get a better-behaved tumor aside from modulating your immune system. Hyperbaric oxygen is probably really valuable. But it’s expensive. It’s time-consuming. And in my experience – I’ve done both—I would take ozone any day over hyperbaric oxygen.
With cancer, we do a combination approach: Intravenous—either ultraviolet and/or ozone therapy. There was a monograph published 40 or 50 years ago by a man named Olney... He had listed several patients with cancer who were cured using ultraviolet blood irradiation therapy and cleaning themselves up – detoxifying with certain supplements.
We also do what’s called minor autohemotherapy. In that, you take a small amount of blood, about 5 or 6cc. You shake it up with ozone rather vigorously, and then reinject it [intramuscularly] almost like an autovaccine. I believe personally that that stimulates the immune system.
The third pillar of what I call ‘triple oxidation’ is giving a small amount of gas intravenously... intravenous oxygen. This therapy has been around in Europe for 60, 70, or 80 years... [I]t seems to stimulate other aspects of the immune system, particularly an enzyme called 15-lipoxygenase-1 (15-LOX-1). That enzyme... has very strong anti-cancer properties.”

Treatment Plan for African Ebola Patients

The treatment method Dr. Rowen will implement in Africa is using direct intravenous oxygen gas (99 percent oxygen, O2, and one percent ozone, O3)—a therapy pioneered by Dr. Howard Robin who will accompany Dr. Rowen on this trip. Again, this is NOT air. It’s a metabolically active gas that is absorbed by your body.
Ozone (O3) reacts immediately in your blood to stimulate a cascade of reactions creating something called ozonized biochemical molecules, which are highly metabolically active in the immune system and in blood circulation. As noted by Dr. Rowen, it’s “extraordinarily effective” and “dirt cheap to do.” Aside from the initial purchase of an oxygen tank and an ozone machine, the cost of treatment is limited to the price of one syringe per patient. Dr. Rowen explains the process as follows:
“You start slow with 20cc. [Dr. Robin] works up to a maximum of 120cc of gas. He gradually increases the concentration. Now, there are two issues: Initially, in the early stages of this treatment, you can get a cough and some chest tightness, which eventually with further treatments modulates and goes away. It doesn’t seem to be a big problem... [but] can be a little uncomfortable, because it takes about five to 10 minutes for it to go away.
The other problem that concerns me a little bit more is if you do this repeatedly over and over again, it can do to the vein what intravenous hydrogen peroxide does – it can make it go away. I have not seen that with major autohemotherapy, [in which you’re] taking the blood out, treating it with ozone, and putting it back in... But if you give ozone gas intravenously, yes, it’s going to act like hydrogen peroxide... Now, when you’re dealing with something like Ebola, I would be happy to sacrifice a couple of veins for a cheap, quick fix.”

Will Big Pharma Sacrifice Lives to Maintain Monopoly on Expensive Ebola Treatments?

If direct intravenous oxygen turns out to be successful, we can expect the government of Sierra Leone to announce to the world that it has a treatment for Ebola, as Dr. Rowen and his team are going there at the invitation of its President. That will make international news very quickly. On the other hand, there are commercial interests that stand to make billions, maybe trillions of dollars, on Ebola treatment drugs and/or vaccines, whether such drugs are effective or not. So it would be naïve to think that they will not make a sincere effort to suppress inexpensive oxidation therapies for the treatment of Ebola and other potential pandemic diseases...  
“Will it be suppressed? Probably yes,” Dr. Rowen says. “I’m not afraid to tell you that my biggest concern in this is that we will be in greater danger from those interests than we will be from the Ebola itself... But you know, it’s something that I have to do. All of us who are going, we’re being guided by something much higher. It’s something that I have to do no matter the risk, because the risk is far greater if we don’t do it.”
Indeed, perhaps the greatest risk of all is that the therapy will be unsuccessful for treating Ebola, and that the disease will keep spreading unchecked around the world. As noted by Dr. Rowen, the Ebola pathogen is unlike most other pathogens, and may not respond like other viruses.
I can usually get rid of herpes zoster (shingles) in a couple of days with ozone therapy, and we can cure a lot of these other acute conditions. But Ebola is a pathogen unlike anything that we’ve ever seen before. I don’t know what’s going to happen when we do this. Maybe the patients are just so toxic that they’re going to be overcome by anything we do. I don’t know... If it doesn’t work, I don’t want to see ozone discredited for all the other miracles it does,” he says.

Why Ozone Therapy Stands a Good Chance of Working Against Ebola

Still, despite such cautious doubts, there are very positive indications suggesting oxygen therapy might be the answer the world needs right now to successfully respond to this situation. As mentioned earlier, ZMapp works by slowing down the virus, allowing your immune system more time to kill off the virus itself. Tests suggest ZMapp can be effective if given early enough, and ozone is orders of magnitude more effective at boosting immune function.
Moreover, ozone also inactivates viruses, which ZMapp does not do, which actually allows you to build immunity against the pathogen. “Since we’re neutralizing the virus, now you have viral particles that are still antigenic – not infectious but antigenic – that can stimulate your immune system, which in itself will make the antibodies,” Dr. Rowen explains.
Basically, that is an authentic “vaccine.” This is how you develop a natural immunity to the virus. I for one eagerly await Dr. Rowen’s results, and will hopefully have the opportunity to interview him again to learn about his first-hand experiences treating Ebola in Africa.
“I wouldn’t go and put myself at risk if I didn’t think that what I’m taking there to use to help these people wouldn’t also take care of myself,” Dr. Rowen says. “I’m really excited about it. I’m really hopeful that this is going to change the world... I pray about this every day. It’s my prayer that the result we get in Sierra Leone is going to change the disease-maintenance paradigm of the world. I call it ‘the sickness system.’ We need a paradigm shift.”

More Information

I strongly endorse Dr. Rowen’s recommendation to locate a clinician who can administer the oxidative therapies discussed here, because they really can be crucial—not just for virulent infectious diseases such as Ebola, but also for a wide array of other chronic diseases, from heart disease and degenerative joint disease to cancer.
To learn more about the general use of oxidative medicine, which include ozone therapy, ultraviolet blood irradiation therapy, and intravenous hydrogen peroxide therapy, please see my previous interview with Dr. Rowen. Again, of the various oxidative therapies available, ozone appears to be the best overall, as it’s the most versatile. It’s particularly beneficial for blood treatments, infection, and chronic fatigue.
Oxidative therapies work by stimulating your immune system, enhancing mitochondrial processes, and facilitating healing with virtually no side effects, and can be used either as treatment or prevention. They can also be used as a potent anti-aging health strategy for general wellness. I also encourage you to look at Dr. Rowen’s channel on YouTube,4 where you can find a number of examples of what oxidative therapies can be used for so that you can avail yourself of this relatively inexpensive and incredibly safe therapy.
To locate a clinician who can administer oxidative therapy you can try the following sources:

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

FDA Fails to Protect Against Antibiotic Resistance, Guarantees More Needless Death and Suffering

English: Hinterzarten, Black Forest: young fem...
. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
 


By Dr. Mercola
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria infect two million Americans every year, causing at least 23,000 deaths. Even more die from complications related to the infections, and the numbers are steadily growing.
It's now clear that we are facing the perfect storm to take us back to the pre-antibiotic age, when some of the most important advances in modern medicineintensive care, organ transplants, care for premature babies, surgeries and even treatment for many common bacterial infections – will no longer be possible.
Experts have been warning about the implications of antibiotic resistance for years, but it's time to face the facts. Many strains of bacteria are becoming resistant to even our strongest antibiotics and are causing deadly infections.
The bacteria are capable of evolving much faster than we are. Secondly, drug companies have all but abandoned the development of new antibiotics because of their poor profit margins.

Antibiotic Resistance: How Did This Happen?

Antibiotic overuse and inappropriate use – such as taking antibiotics to treat viral infections -- bears a heavy responsibility for creating the antibiotic-resistant superbug crisis we are facing today.
According to Dr. Arjun Srinivasan, associate director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as much as half of all antibiotics used in clinics and hospitals "are either unneeded or patients are getting the wrong drugs to treat their infections."1
There's more to the story than this, however, as antibiotic overuse occurs not just in medicine, but also in food production. In fact, agricultural usage accounts for about80 percent of all antibiotic use in the US,2 so it's a MAJOR source of human antibiotic consumption.
Nearly 25 million pounds of antibiotics are administered to livestock in the US every year for purposes other than treating disease, such as making the animals grow bigger faster.
In other parts of the world, such as the EU, adding antibiotics to animal feed to accelerate growth has been banned for years. The antibiotic residues in meat and dairy, as well as the resistant bacteria, are passed on to you in the foods you eat.
Eighty different antibiotics are allowed in cows' milk. According to the CDC, 22 percent of antibiotic-resistant illness in humans is in fact linked to food.3 In the words of Dr. Srinivasan:
"The more you use an antibiotic, the more you expose a bacteria to an antibiotic, the greater the likelihood that resistance to that antibiotic is going to develop. So the more antibiotics we put into people, we put into the environment, we put into livestock, the more opportunities we create for these bacteria to become resistant."
This is a much bigger issue than antibiotics simply being left behind in your meat. For instance, bacteria often share genes that make them resistant. In other words, the drug-resistant bacteria that contaminates your meat may pass on their resistant genes to other bacteria in your body, making you more likely to become sick.  
Drug-resistant bacteria also accumulate in manure that is spread on fields and enters waterways, allowing the drug-resistant bacteria to spread far and wide and ultimately back up the food chain to us. You can see how easily antibiotic resistance spreads, via the food you eat and community contact, in the CDC's infographic below.
Source: CDC.gov, Antibiotic Resistance Threats in the United States, 2013

One-Third of the Most Dangerous Resistant Pathogens Are Found in Your Food

According to the CDC's report, there are 12 resistant pathogens that pose a "serious" threat to public health. One-third of them are found in food. The four drug-resistant pathogens in question are:
  • Campylobacter, which causes an estimated 310,000 infections and 28 deaths per year
  • Salmonella, responsible for another 100,000 infections and 38 deaths annually
  • E. coli
  • Shigella
Previous research suggested you have a 50/50 chance of buying meat tainted with drug-resistant bacteria when you buy meat from your local grocery store.4 But it may be even worse. Using data collected by the federal agency called NARMS (National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System), the Environmental Working Group (EWG) found antibiotic-resistant bacteria in 81 percent of ground turkey, 69 percent of pork chops, 55 percent of ground beef, and 39 percent of raw chicken parts purchased in stores in 2011. EWG nutritionist and the report's lead researcher, Dawn Undurraga, issued the following warning to the public:5
"Consumers should be very concerned that antibiotic-resistant bacteria are now common in the meat aisles of most American supermarkets... These organisms can cause foodborne illnesses and other infections. Worse, they spread antibiotic-resistance, which threatens to bring on a post-antibiotic era where important medicines critical to treating people could become ineffective."

What Happens When a Country Takes Its Livestock Off Antibiotics?

In the US, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) are hotbeds for breeding antibiotic-resistant bacteria because of the continuous feeding of low doses of antibiotics to the animals, who become living bioreactors for pathogens to survive, adapt, and eventually, thrive. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) ruled that antibiotic resistance is a major threat to public health, worldwide, and the primary cause for this man-made epidemic is the widespread misuse of antibiotics.6
Measures to curb the rampant overuse of agricultural antibiotics could have a major impact in the US, as evidenced by actions taken in other countries. For example, Denmark stopped the widespread use of antibiotics in their pork industry 14 years ago. The European Union has also banned the routine use of antibiotics in animal feed over concerns of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
After Denmark implemented the antibiotic ban, it was later confirmed the country had drastically reduced antibiotic-resistant bacteria in their animals and food. Furthermore, the Danish 'experiment' proved that removing antibiotics doesn't have to hurt the industry's bottom line. In the first 12 years of the ban, the Danish pork industry grew by 43 percent -- making it one of the top exporters of pork in the world. As reported by Consumer Reports:7
"What happens when a country takes its livestock off antibiotics? In 2000 Denmark's pork industry ceased using antibiotics to promote the growth of its animals. Instead of eviscerating the nation's pork industry, those moves contributed to a 50 percent rise in pork production, according to a 2012 article in the journal Nature.8
Frank Aarestrup, D.V.M., Ph.D., head of the EU Reference Laboratory for Antimicrobial Resistance and author of the article, attributes Denmark's success to three factors: laws banning the improper use of antibiotics, a robust system of surveillance and enforcement, and rules that prevent veterinarians from profiting from selling antibiotics to farmers.'Farmers and their livestock can thrive without the heavy use of antibiotics,' Aarestrup wrote. 'With a little effort, I believe that other countries can and must help their farmers to do the same.'"

What's Standing in the Way of Curbing Antibiotic Use in the US?

In a word, industry. For instance, the American Pork Industry doesn't want to curb antibiotic use, as this would mean raising the cost of producing pork by an estimated $5 for every 100 pounds of pork brought to market. The pharmaceutical industry is obviously against it as well. Even though they're not keen on producing new antibiotics to bring to the market, they want to protect those that are already here – especially those incredibly lucrative varieties that are used perpetually in animal feed. Even Dr. Aarestrup, who helped Denmark cut the use of antibiotics in livestock by 60 percent, wrote about the intense industry pressures he faced:9
"Reducing Denmark's reliance on antibiotics was far from easy. My lab was visited by pharmaceutical executives who did not like what we were finding, and I would be cornered at meetings by people who disagreed with our conclusions. I have even been publicly accused of being paid to produce biased results. Despite such challenges, it has been satisfying to see that Danish farmers and their livestock can thrive without the heavy use of antibiotics. …The practice continues unabated in the United States, despite a statement from the Food and Drug Administration [FDA]… suggesting that farmers should stop voluntarily."

FDA Again Fails to Take Appropriate Action on Agricultural Antibiotics

The FDA issued its long-awaited guidance on agricultural antibiotics on December 11, 2013.10 Unfortunately, it's unlikely to have a major impact in terms of protecting your health. The agency is simply asking drug companies to voluntarily restrict the use of antibiotics that are important in human medicine by excluding growth promotion in animals as a listed use on the drug label.11This would prevent farmers from legally using antibiotics such as tetracyclines, penicillins, and azithromycin for growth promotion purposes. But it certainly does not go far enough to protect public health. The guidance contains far too many loopholes for any meaningful protection.
For example, farmers would still be allowed to use antibiotics for therapeutic purposes, which would allow them to continue feeding their animals antibiotics for growth promotion without actually admitting that's the reason for doing so. As reported byScientific American:12
"[T]he success of the FDA's new program depends on how many companies volunteer to change their labels over the next 90 days in alignment with the FDA cutoff period. (Companies that do change their labels will have three years to phase in the changes.) And then there are myriad questions about how this would be enforced on the farm."
In short, while giving the superficial appearance of taking warranted action to protect public health, the reality is that they're simply shills for the industry. Michael Taylor,13 FDA Deputy Commissioner for Foods and Veterinary Medicine, and former VP for public policy at Monsanto, is again responsible for caving in to industry at the expense of human lives.

Why Did FDA Ignore Risk Factors from the Very Beginning?

According to a recent report14 from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the FDA has known that using antibiotics in factory farms is harmful to human health for over a dozen years, yet it took no action to curb its use. And now, all they're doing is asking drug companies, who make massive amounts of money from these products, to voluntary restrict their use.
The report also found that 26 of the 30 drugs reviewed by the FDA did not meet safety guidelines issued in 1973, and NONE of the 30 drugs would meet today's safety guidelines... As reported by Rodale Magazine,15 the FDA is supposed to look at three factors when determining the safety of an antibiotic-based feed additive. Based on the three factors listed below, the NRDC's report16 concluded that virtually ALL feed additives containing penicillin and tetracycline antibiotics—both of which are used to treat human disease—pose a "high risk" to human health, and should not be permitted:
  1. The chances that antibiotic-resistant bacteria are being introduced into the food supply
  2. The likelihood that people would get exposed to those bacteria
  3. The consequences of what happens when people are exposed to those bacteria—would they still be able to get treated with human antibiotics?

Looking on the Brighter Side

The impending superbug crisis has a three-prong solution:
  1. Better infection prevention, with a focus on strengthening your immune system naturally
  2. More responsible use of antibiotics for people and animals, with a return to biodynamic farming and a complete overhaul of our food system
  3. Innovative new approaches to the treatment of infections from all branches of science, natural as well as allopathic
There are some promising new avenues of study that may result in fresh ways to fight superbugs. For example, Dutch scientists have discovered a way to deactivate antibiotics with a blast of ultraviolet light before bacteria have a chance to adapt, and before the antibiotics can damage your good bacteria.17
And British scientists have discovered how bacteria talk to each other through "quorum signaling" and are investigating ways of disrupting this process in order to render them incapable of causing an infection. They believe this may lead to a new line of anti-infectives that do not kill bacteria, but instead block their ability to cause disease.18 But the basic strategy that you have at your disposal right now is prevention, prevention, prevention—it's much easier to prevent an infection than to halt one already in progress.
Natural compounds with antimicrobial activity such as garliccinnamonoregano extract, colloidal silverManuka honey, probiotics and fermented foodsechinacea, sunlight and vitamin D are all excellent options to try before resorting to drugs. Best of all, research has shown that bacteria do not tend to develop resistance to these types of treatments. The basic key to keeping your immune system healthy is making good lifestyle choices such as proper diet, stress management and exercise.

You Can Take Action to Help Save Antibiotics from Extinction

Avoiding antibiotic-resistance is but one of several good reasons to avoid meats and animal products from animals raised in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). This is in part why grass-fed pastured meat is the only type of meat I recommend. If you're regularly eating meat bought at your local grocery store, know that you're in all likelihood getting exposed to antibiotic-resistant bacteria and a low dose of antibiotics with every meal... and this low-dose exposure is what's allowing bacteria to adapt and develop such strong resistance.
The FDA's stance toward antibiotics in livestock feed is unconscionable in light of the harm it wreaks, and its weakness makes being proactive on a personal level all the more important. Quite simply, the FDA has been, and still is, supporting the profitability of large-scale factory farming at the expense of public health.
You can help yourself and your community by using antibiotics only when absolutely necessary and by purchasing organic, antibiotic-free meats and other foods from local farmers – not CAFOs. Even though the problem of antibiotic resistance needs to be stemmed through public policy on a nationwide level, the more people who get involved on a personal level to stop unnecessary antibiotic use the better. You can help on a larger scale, too, by telling the FDA we need a mandatory ban on sub-therapeutic doses of antibiotics for livestock—not weak, voluntary guidance.
FDA Deputy Commissioner and ex-Monsanto attorney Michael Taylor will leave quite a legacy behind. He's not only served Monsanto and the other pesticide producers quite well, he seems to carry the same sentiment over to the antiobiotic crisis. The FDA claims that a voluntary guideline "is the most efficient and effective way to change the use of these products in animal agriculture." It would appear that Taylor's concern for human health takes a very distant back seat to industry profits...
To make  your voice heard, please sign the Organic Consumer's Association's petition, calling for a mandatory ban on sub-therapeutic doses of antibiotics for livestock.
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