The Dark Side of Antibiotics

There are many advances in our health care we can be thankful for today. Prior to the 1900’s the top related causes of death were due mainly to contaminated food and water as well as an unfit housing and waste 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 introduced. As time has passed, we have become more and more conscience about our personal hygiene. This has resulted in a tremendous decrease in infectious diseases.

On the other hand, while there has been a tremendous decrease in deaths due to infectious diseases, the introduction of penicillin in the 1940’s, new issues within the disease related causes of death cropped up. Instead of dying of many infectious diseases, death from serious chronic conditions has gotten out of control. People are not dying from poor hygiene, they are dying from the lack of something else.

And this is where our discussion turns to the endangered internal species as a result of antibiotics. The undeniable truth of the matter is this – the destruction of bad bacteria by means of antibiotics also kills our amazing probiotic bacteria friends.

While antibiotics have helped us eliminate so many diseases, the constant abuse of these medications, which includes prescribing them when people have colds and flues, which are virus related, not bacterial. Virus related illnesses are those that cannot be treated or cured with the use of antibiotics 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.

In addition to this people have added to the development of the super resistant bacteria due to the lack of following through with their dosage of their medications properly. This has only introduced more problems as more powerful antibiotics are created with the unfortunate results of the super antibiotic-resistant bug just keeps getting worse.

So, where does this leave us? What is the solution?

It is not a secret that both bad and good bacteria are destroyed when taking these medications. So, why is it that along with our prescriptions for antibiotics, we are not then prescribed with probiotics to replace what has been lost through antibiotics?

Although antibiotics have really reeked havoc on good bacterial growth, we have added to their damage by our more modern lifestyles. 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.

So, how do we fix this problem? The answer is simple.

Helping our intestinal tract is just a matter of introducing the probiotics our bodies have lost and continue to lose daily. We can do this by adding into our diets the fruits, vegetables, yogurts and other foods that contain a wide variety of probiotics. 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.