There’s a scene that gets played out many times each day overseas. It’s one I know well, because I’ve played it out a few times. You’re an American out in the countryside in a foreign country and you’re trying to find some location or another. You stop a local, and ask, “Where is the local farmer’s market?” The local shakes her head, clearly not understanding, so you repeat the question, only this time louder. Same response. If you’re as dense as me, you sometimes do it a third time, louder still.
That’s how we Americans deal with lots of problems. I’ll avoid citing examples in foreign affairs and politics (where there are many), but I think Dave Milano makes the point well in his comment following my last post: more skin infections and less effectiveness from the antibiotics? Well, just prescribe more frequent use of the antibiotics. Go team.
If some treatment not only doesn’t work, but seems to be producing new sets of problems, you don’t do more of it…or do you?
That’s what this MRSA situation seems all about. We as a society have known for a long time that antibiotics create disease-resistant bacteria. Our approach has been to try to find new antibiotics for each set of disease-resistant bacteria, rather than inquiring about the underlying causes of infection (which I don’t pretend to have a complete answer to, only some intriguing explanations), and spreading the use of antibiotics on the farm.
I’d like to say, especially to Gwen/Elderberryjam, that if I seemed to be criticizing health care workers, I definitely didn’t mean to, and I’m sorry if I offended anyone. I’ve been treated by and collaborated with too many health care workers to take their efforts and commitment lightly. I’ve often said to family and friends that I could never do what most of them do, because I’m not up to it, it’s too difficult, too stressful, too demanding.
Nor do I think that hospitals and doctors are necessarily at fault. I’m not sure any one group or another is at fault. Rather, we as a society want quick fixes to big problems, and want someone to blame if the quick fixes aren’t forthcoming. So a teenager in Virginia got sick, the antibiotics didn’t work, he died, and the blame game started right up. The schools aren’t sanitary enough.
My gripe is with the old double standard. MRSA caused more than 18,000 deaths, so is obviously a huge problem. I had a cousin die in the hospital from a staph infection about ten years ago, and it was an aberration then. It now seems to be occurring more frequently outside of hospitals. I don’t think washing your hands more carefully or scrubbing school lockers is the long-term answer to the problem. In other words, MRSA is not being treated as if it’s a huge problem.
Listeria monocytogenes in raw milk intended for direct consumption is not a huge problem. But it is treated by government authorities as if it were a huge problem. Small farms are shut down and consumers denied an important food product, even though there’s not been a documented illness (let alone a death) from listeria monocytogenes in raw milk for 35 years.
We seem incapable of saying as a society: okay, let’s step back from these situations and acknowledge that the way we’ve been dealing with such problems for the last sixty years is no longer working. In fact, what we’re doing seems to be counter-productive. Maybe we need some different solutions, some different approaches.
Is it possible, as several readers suggest, that too many of us are out of balance in our intestinal flora? Perhaps some major studies could help determine the role of diet in building up immunity against MRSA. Are there nutritional steps than can help reduce the chances of contracting MRSA? Maybe even some herbs you might take for a month or two before going to the hospital. Possibly a temporary ban on antibiotics being fed to farm animals, leading to a permanent ban? Sure it would cost some money, but if the authorities are really concerned with "protecting" us, who cares about profits?
Or how about this: supposing the brightest minds in the alternative and conventional arenas collaborated on some new approaches? Sounds pretty crazy, huh? But that’s what you do in a crisis, and from the looks of this situation, a fast-spreading bacteria that kills 20% of those infected and can’t be eliminated with antibiotics seems like a crisis.
I think a big part of the challenge facing health care workers at all levels is that it’s difficult to come face-to-face with the possibility that some substantial part of your hard work over many years has been misdirected, especially when the work is as difficult and demanding as it really is. When you’ve been taught theories and techniques that have been developed by the supposed best minds in the world, it’s tough to admit that they may not be working any longer (if they ever did).
For any addict (whether to drugs, booze…or profits), the biggest challenge is simply admitting there’s a problem. We’re not there yet.
The fear of him contracting some sort of bacterial infection while in the hospital was a very real threat. My anxiety levels were so high dealing with all the other health challenges; I chose to live in denial about the pending bacterial threats. I would have gone crazy thinking about all the vulnerabilities Chris was exposed to.
My husband and I did something most people dont think of when their child is on a ventilator, with different tubes coming out of his body all over the place (he had a central line on the right side of his upper chest, a dialysis catheter on the left side of his chest, and drainage tubes inserted on both sides around the lower part of his ribs.) We secretly applied nutritional supplements topically. Theres this product called Ambrotose (contains healing glyconutrients). We applied this every few hours along with vitamin E, vitamin A, a liquid vitamin C and Omega 3s. Who knows if it helped, but at least we felt we were doing something to help boost his immune system.
After a few days, we got scared that the doctors didnt know what we were doing, so we told them. They were O.K. with it. So we continued. We had different resident doctors and support staff come in to see what we were doing (word spread through the hospital). Our nutritional methods were received positively. We had many conversations about nutrition in general, organic food and of course our choice of drinking raw milk.
Once Chris was able to eat (week 7 in the hospital) we were allowed to feed him all organic food. We were back at Kaiser and they were very open-minded about our choices. There was no way Chris was going to eat that crap they call food in the hospital. The Ronald McDonald house was near the hospital, so I was able to cook the food there and bring it to the hospital.
There is no way to prove any of this helped Chris, but we think it did.
Ive really enjoyed reading all the posts over this last week. The knowledge base of the people who communicate on this blog is amazing.
http://elderberryjam.wordpress.com/
It has had a few hits, which actually scares me a little. I like to write, but am very afraid of comments and contraversy.
A few years back, I started the book by Walter Wink, "The Powers that Be." I still haven’t finished it. Although it was exposed to me through religion, as I read it, I was working in the bowels of the WV healthcare crisis and how that affected Wheeling, WV. As I read, it all applied to healthcare. And I think it does, as a sick institution that needs called back to its mission; and needs some cogs oiled or completely replaced.
One of the reasons I have appreciated this blog so much is that it seems to fit in the calling healthcare back to its mission. I am easily disillusioned, but when I step back and think about it myself, this approach is important.
The opposite is of course a negative feedback loop, which is a course of action that results in less of the effect that initiated the action. Negative feedback loops tend to bring a system back into balance, and examples include the thermostat on your furnace and air conditioner and the classic economic laws of "pricing, supply and demand". The short-hand description of a negative feedback loop is "If it works, do it more!" and "If it doesn’t work, do it less!"
The problem with the issue of antibiotic resistant germs is that most people don’t understand that it’s a consequence of simple evolution, and that in the long run the bugs always win. 🙂 They think that the label on their soap that states "Kills 99.9% of all germs" is a good thing, not realizing that the 0.1% percent that survive now have a free reign to go forth into the environment and multiply. It’s been tough trying to educate my own wife on this point, let alone the millions of other mothers, farmers, health-care workers, etc. I’m afraid that it’s going to take another entire system collapse before people start realizing that doing more of what hasn’t worked in the past isn’t going to suddenly fix the problem. A better approach might be to stop trying to kill germs off in favor of keeping as many of them around as possible, since the pathological ones will then have a much harder time trying to compete against the ones that don’t bother us. But, try to popularize that idea and you’ll be pilloried as an idiot and out of touch.
But yes, tell these things to the public or the establishment, and they will lock you up, I am sure.
I was in Russia a year ago visiting family. I was still in bad shape – and on my killer candida diet. needless to say, I was sick and miserable and nothing was working right. I did go to the doctor there and ran a bunch tests which cost close to nothing. You can get results emailed to you next day from an independent lab – there are 10 of them througout the city. You can get tested for anything you want. Anyway, they tested me for bacteria in my gut, and lo and behold the bifidobacteria was low…and there was another one that was not a good one that popped up. They gave me a good supplement of bifido, and then also for something else I had, they wanted to give me an antibiotic cream.
Well, before they gave it to me, they took a culture of my infection and tested it against 4 different antibiotics. I was resistant to two of them – or it was.
Everything worked and I got started on my way back to normality, more or less.
When I came back, I wanted to check my flora balance again, a few months later. I went to a g.e. He laughed at me for wanting to take the test. He said: why do you need it? I told him. He said, oh, you don’t need it. I looked at him and left. Most of the docs are like that, unfortunately, here, and if it’s HMO, they try to minimize the costs.
Basically, in Russia they won’t give you an antibiotic without an antifungal or probiotic prescribed with it. Here – they gave my boyfriend Levaquin and did not even breathe a word about probiotics. I put him on Culturelle and it saved his skin, I believe that.
Finally, about responsibility. I have come to believe that too many of us rely on the government and ‘them’ to admit to their mistakes and change their policies. I don’t believe it can happen on that level. I believe it’s up to the individual to educate himself/herself and then spread the info. And it does spread. Basically, if you wait for the big dogs to admit to this and that, forget it. Too much money involved.
Elly, I believe this is so very true.
There is also fabulous information on the body ecology website, http://www.bodyecology.com