The Good, Bad and Ugly of Antibiotics
We all have to admit to the many advances in our health care we can be thankful for today. Before the 1900’s the top related causes of death were due largely to contaminated food and water as well as an insufficient housing and sewage disposal system. Once we began to understand more about the invisible world full of bacteria, things like indoor plumbing and the sterilization of medical instruments were established. As time has passed, we have become more and more conscience about our personal hygiene. This has resulted in a wonderful decrease in infectious diseases.
Yet, while there has been a significant decrease in deaths due to infectious diseases, starting with the introduction of penicillin in the 1940’s, new issues within the disease related causes of death cropped up. The causes of death went from infectious diseases to chronic disease conditions. People are not dying from poor hygiene, they are dying from the decrease and elimination of something else.
And this is where our discussion turns to the dark side of antibiotics. The undeniable truth of this problem is – the destruction of bad bacteria by means of antibiotics also kills our amazing probiotic bacteria friends.
While antibiotics have attributed to the elimination of so many diseases, the constant abuse of these medications, which includes prescribing them for illnesses that are virus related, such as the flue or even the common cold. Virus related illnesses are those that antibiotics cannot help. So, while sick with something non-bacterial you are killing off your bodies means of keeping it’s immune system in top condition, which only leads to being more susceptible to other illnesses.
With the misuse of antibiotics comes the introduction of the antibiotic resistant bacteria. This has produced a cycle that keeps getting worse. Drug companies continue to manufacture and develop stronger antibiotics and the abuses such as mentioned above continue to happen. It is a never ending cycle that is become quite frightening when you dig deeper into the consequences.
So, where does this leave us? What is the solution?
Doctors are well aware of the physical consequences that result from antibiotics. If doctors know that antibiotics destroy our healthy flora, how come they don’t follow up their prescriptions with probiotics?
As easy as it is to blame all the damages and destruction of our healthy flora in our intestines, fast food, soda, diet products, processed foods and the total lack of eating well-balanced meals are also to blame. And if these things weren’t bad enough, lack of proper amounts of sleep, emotional stress and even things we can not totally control like the environment, have all played a part in diminishing our good bacterial intestinal flora. And we have only ourselves to blame.
This leads us to the question of what to do next? If you’re reading this article, no matter where you live, you have access to the solution. Even if it means ordering it online.
Helping our intestinal tract is just a matter of introducing the probiotics our bodies have lost and continue to lose daily. It’s as easy as eating good unprocessed foods, organic fruits and vegetables if we can afford and acquire them. We can also add them by way of probiotic powders, probiotic liquids and probiotic supplements.
In the next article I’ll be talking about some of the more common foods that we can buy to encourage our healthy probiotic bacteria to grow and outnumber the bad bacteria.
Article by Kimberly Shannon. If you missed the first article on probiotics you can find it at our breast cancer support site.
