Wellness Wednesday - Why antibiotics are so bad for you

You wake up one morning and you just feel "off". You have a slight headache and you feel a little unsteady on your feet. You step firmly into denial and try to carry on with your day until the afternoon comes and you start to feel cold, but hot at the same time. Your feet feel like they are made of lead, the slight headache is bordering on migraine, your joints are aching and all you can think of is lying down in a dark room and closing your eyes for an eternity.

Up until this point, we're all on the same page, we've all been there and we all hate being there! But from here on out is where I'll probably part ways with you. MY next step would be to go the kitchen and make myself a mug of tea using a combination of herbs and spices and some raw honey. Then I'd take my aching body to the bedroom and lie down and sleep until I felt human again which would be in a maximum of 3-4 days.

Some people would head to Dischem and buy all the over-the-counter (OTC) remedies they can get their hands on, dose themselves and then go home and sleep. Not TOO different from my method really...yet. We'll get back to that group though. The third group of people would probably call their doctor and make an urgent appointment, the aim being to get their hands on antibiotics as soon as possible to squash the infection "quickly". The great irony is that antibiotic will likely cause your illness to stick around for 2 weeks or more so there's nothing quick about it.

Let's go back to the group of people that self-medicate. (Tell me you HAVEN'T experienced this) After several days of the chills and fevers, achy body, sore throat and general feeling of un-wellness, you finally think you can't do it alone and the only solution is to go get antibiotics to "just squash the last of the bug." That statement is ironic and I'll explain why in the next paragraph. Eventually, they end up like the antibiotic group of people, heading to the doctor. It's unavoidable. The problem with OTC medications is that they essentially stop the body's natural healing process. In other words, the fevers. Read this post to see just how essential fevers actually are to your immune system. Taking OTC medication is going to prolong your illness, AND cause a secondary infection to take hold.

As I said in the previous paragraph, it's ironic, thinking that antibiotics will "quickly" squash the bug. What they do is FURTHER inhibit the body's immune system and you will very likely develop ANOTHER infection on top of the one you have. You can take it to the bank that you will end up on yet MORE antibiotics at this point. There is not a doctor that I have ever been to who hasn't taken it as a given that a flu infection/upper respiratory infection/sinus infection = antibiotics. Even when I used to refuse the script, they'd tell me to take the script just in case I needed it?!

Those were the days where I still didn't have enough faith in my own body's ability to heal itself, or in nature, to have a solution. I still believed I needed a doctor to tell me what was wrong and fix me. To be honest, my body COULDN'T have healed itself even if it tried, with the way my immune system had been so badly suppressed but I didn't need a doctor to tell me that. I knew my body was in a bad way. Doctors had TRIED to fix it, and couldn't.

When I started really investigating the reasons why my immune system was so badly suppressed and my body so sensitive to every food under the sun, I kept coming back to the same perpetrator: antibiotics. I grew up on them. I remember being sick a lot as a child. Most of it centered around my stomach and my colon but we didn't realise that, even the ones that didn't directly centre around my stomach and colon, were indirectly caused by it. When I was sick, mom took me to the doctor. How could she not? I needed a doctor's letter for school AND we figured a doctor HAD to know what was wrong with me, didn't they?

Apparently not! I remember my doctor actually calling in his colleague from the next room to ask him if HE might know what was wrong with me. That always stuck in my mind. He was stumped. I also have a memory of being alone in the room with him and him asking me if there was any reason why I'd pretend to be sick? Did I hate school? (well yes, but still!), was I unhappy for some reason? He thought it was psychosomatic. He was a bit of an idiot to be honest. I know there are better doctors out there. But his only solution was to prescribe antibiotics. Whether a doctor is good or bad, that is what they do.

They know you have flu. They see it on a daily basis and they KNOW nothing but time will cure it, but they go through the motions of checking your pulse, your temperature, your glands, throat and ears, because you have paid for their time and, admit it, it makes you feel like they KNOW what they're doing. You feel like you're in safe hands. You even start feeling a little better just because of the routine of checking everything! (Tell me I'm talking rubbish;) Then, because they have proven themselves by taking all the required steps, you feel better about taking the script they offer because they "must" know what they're talking about.

Let's make something clear in case you haven't read all my blogs yet. Influenza is a virus. Viruses CANNOT be killed by antibiotics. Doctors know this but they will go through the motions of appearing helpful and concerned (whilst making money) and they will prescribe antibiotics regardless. Honestly, this action by a “medical professional” is not only totally ineffective but also medically negligent. The reason I was so sickly as a child is BECAUSE I took so many antibiotics and my already suppressed immune system, took an even greater dive. Antibiotics not only suppress the immune system, they DISABLE it.

The immune system is, quite honestly, a miracle of nature. It has the ability to prevent and heal virtually any disease, including cancer! Bet you didn't figure that! The thing is, what we call "diseases" are now actually known to be symptoms of a condition arising from a severely compromised immune system. You were sick long before the symptoms made themselves known because your immune system was a mess. You just didn't realise it because modern medicine encourages us not to dig below the surface but rather to cover it up.

Anyone who thinks that modern medicines "heals" would be wrong. Modern medicine doesn't heal, it masks. It will never holistically heal the origin of a condition. Ask any doctor and they'll be forced to admit it. If they don't, they're lying or living in denial and they don't be able to back it up with anything. All it does is fix the symptoms while masking the actual cause of the disease. In fact, it tends to make things even worse because of the chemical medications and invasive surgical procedures. You may walk out of hospital thinking you survived and you're cured. I hate to say it, but disease will show itself in another form eventually if you don't address the actual issue.

What's really scary about antibiotics being used so casually and being so readily accessible is that the "bad" microbes have adjusted to them and they are fighting back. Sometimes TWO courses or more of antibiotics are required to kill a bug. That's because we are now fighting superbugs which are resistant to the current antibiotics available. They have "cottoned on" to us and they are getting stronger as a result. If we keep on flooding people's systems with antibiotics when they don't actually need them, then, when the day comes that they actually DO need them, they will be as effective as a sugar pill.

People laugh about "alternative" medicine. The fact is, WHEN (not if) antibiotics become ineffective, "alternative medicine" will be our only option. What's laughable is that modern medicine has only been around for about 100 years. Auyervedic medicine has been around for about 5000 years and yet they have the cheek to call it "alternative". Scientists are actively researching food, herbs and spices because they KNOW we will need them at some point.

In most people today, the immune system is often already HIGHLY compromised because of a poor diet, environmental toxins and many other factors including medication like antibiotics. Let's talk more specifically about how antibiotics affect our bodies. Our immune system is highly complex. Did you know that at least 80% of our immune system is found in the digestive system? It's regulated by the gut flora which are microbes, and they live there in large numbers. In case you can't grasp the concept of "large numbers": at least 15% of the weight of the entire body can be attributed to the trillions of microbes and other organisms, living mostly in the digestive tract.

The efficient functioning of your immune system is completely dependent on the ratio of “good” microbes to “bad” microbes. You need roughly 85% “good microbes” to 15% “bad microbes” in your colon to have a strong immune system. In most people, because of the factors I mentioned earlier, this ratio is severely skewed in favour of "bad" microbes. This particular imbalance is know as "dysbiosis." As you can imagine, this is going to have a terrible weakening effect on the immune system and, therefore, your body.

Most of us don't even know what an antibiotic actually does. We just think of them as "magic pills" and we pop them without thinking about it, because we want to feel better. Here's what is happening to your immune system when you swallow those pills: Not only are the “bad" microbes being killed off, but the "good" microbes are as well, leaving your colon almost completely depleted of beneficial, immune response-regulating gut flora. That leaves you with NO immune system to speak of. That's after just one course of antibiotics. Most people take them at least 4 times a year.

This is the place that I was at constantly as a child and, as a result, I was sick constantly. It didn't help that I had IBS as well. My colon was depleted of anything good, it couldn't absorb any nutrients, AND I had a disabled immune system. This continued well into my 30s. I was SO lucky to not find myself with some or other chronic disease. Had I carried on along that route, I have no doubt that I would've found myself facing a chronic illness. Instead, I found the problem and I took drastic steps to fix things.

A lot of women have heard of candida. A lot of women suffer from it and I was one of them. Candida albicans and candida tropicalis are two of the most common "bad" microbes that grow rapidly in a body  weakened by antibiotics. Candida is a yeast or fungus and it thrives on a high sugar (bread, pasta and even natural sugars in fruit and milk) and low mineral diet. That pretty much encapsulates the modern diet! Studies show that even TWO DAYS on antibiotics can start candida growth. The symptoms are constant fatigue, bloating, digestive problems, foggy thinking, mood swings, endometriosis, indigestion, food sensitivity, and hormone imbalances. Any of those strike a chord? I bet they do with a lot of you.

Making the decision to cut out modern medicine from your life is scary, I know. Anything unknown is scary. It wasn't an immediate thing for me. I started with antibiotics but I took longer to cut out all medication. I was the kind of person who ALWAYS had nurofen in my handbag. I suffered from headaches all the time (a sign that my body was heading for a crash of some kind) and then there was the dreaded, once a month, period pains that were inescapable. I was terrified to cut them out altogether.

How did I eventually do it? Well, I changed my whole lifestyle. I switched to only organic and free-range food. I cut all chemicals out of my life. I started eating real food. If you are unsure about that, there are several recipes on this blog that will point you in the right direction. I started using herbs and spices as medicines, the way it used to be done 100 years ago before modern medicine became the norm. Amazingly, (or not!) my chronic headaches stopped. Period pains are manageable without pain tablets now and there are the side benefits like being energetic and seldom sick! It's not so scary when you realise you have options. Food is a powerful medication when taken the right way. You have natural antibiotics at your fingertips which won't totally annihilate all the bacteria in your colon. They get to the root of an issue instead of just masking it.

I had to do all of this by trial and error. But I started this blog so that YOU wouldn't have to. I'm constantly doing the research and finding out new things because it interests me and because it benefits me, and YOU by default;) Take the time to read through some of the posts and think about stepping out the box and trying something new.

Baby steps work just fine. The main thing is that you TAKE the steps:)