Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
December 21, 2007
I’m evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they’re letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.
It covers:
- The best blogging techniques.
- How to get traffic to your blog.
- How to turn your blog into money.
I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it’s still free.
Protected:
December 21, 2007MRSA – more deadly than AIDS
November 2, 2007Everyday Vitality
Vitaitycapsules.com
Newsletter for November 2007
What is MRSA ? MRSA is a collection of letters that stand for Methicillin Resistant Staph Aureus. This is a bacterium (Staph) that is resistant to antibiotics. One of the antibiotics that it is resistant to is Methicillin. Hence the name.
MRSA is in the news quite a bit these days. The only wonder is why it has not been discussed sooner. MRSA was responsible for more deaths in 2006 than HIV AIDS. Yet there are no public education/information programs in place. I am writing about MRSA this month so that you can have useful information to protect you and your loved ones from MRSA.
MRSA was first identified in hospitals and attributed to the frequent use of antibiotics. The scientists agreed that over-prescribing of antibiotics by doctors was the cause. In 1992, Doctors were told that their use of antibiotics in the office setting was the cause of the resistant organisms in hospitals. As a practicing physician, I felt this could not be true because doctors do not prescribe Methicillin to patients in the office. Further, most patients seen in the office never end up in the hospital. Finally, most doctors are specialists that do not routinely prescribe antibiotics. There just was not enough people seeing enough doctors who were prescribing methicillin to explain the occurrence of MRSA. At the same time, I was a volunteer speaker for the vegetarian society. I was researching the ill effects of eating meats. In 1993 my research revealed a fact that tied everything together for me. Antibiotics were being fed to chickens, cows and pigs to get them to grow faster. In other words, every person who ate poultry, pork, beef or dairy was getting antibiotics daily. I then became aware of catalogs that sold antibiotics to farmers for use in their live stock. These catalogs did not require a doctor or vetinarian to authorize the antibiotic use.
This widespread use of antibiotics explained the widespread resistance of Staph and how the patients seemed to all have the same type MRSA. If it was caused by doctor over prescribing, then patients with different doctors would have bacteria with different patterns of antibiotic resistance. Since patients mainly have 2 types of resistance patterns, there must be a system in place that exposes all patients to the same antibiotics. Further study revealed that 70% of all antibiotics consumed in the United States is consumed by livestock. In other words, doctors at best, control the use of 30% of antibiotics consumed in this country. This confirmed my suspicion that doctor prescribing alone could not explain the emergence of MRSA. Just about now, all you vegetarians out there are probably thinking that you are safe and your virtuous ways have spared you. Not so fast. It turns out that the factory farms dump the waste of these animals into the waterways. The streams and tap water in our country are filled with antibiotic residues and antibiotic resistant bacteria.
Yes, our worse fears are true, it is in the water. Quarantine measures can be expected to be useless against MRSA. This has been borne out by observation. The hospitals in Syracuse, where I used to practice Medicine, immediately instituted quarantine measures to limit the spread of MRSA. The quarantine wards got larger and larger. This method was not effective. While hand washing is nice, it can backfire. The doctor who is vigorously washing their hands between patients will develop breaks in his skin where bacteria can enter and infect him. Further, this infection is spread by the presence of the antibiotic, not by the transfer of organisms.
To make it very clear: Normal bacteria that are present on the skin convert to MRSA when exposed to antibiotics. Put another way, people who do not have MRSA develop MRSA by being exposed to antibiotics.
Staph occurs commonly on the skin of healthy people and is harmless until and unless it penetrates the skin and gets into the blood. Staph penetrates the skin when the skin is cut as during surgery or the insertion of catheters (tubes) into the body through the skin or through an orafice (a hole in the body that was present at birth ). Antibiotics are given before surgery to prevent staph infections. Unfortunately, this contributes to the creation of resistant superbugs. Resistance is transmitted by a piece of protein called a plasmid. There are some members of every group of bacteria that contain a plasmid that makes them resistant to antibiotics. A bacteria that has a plasmid is resistant and can share copies of its plasmid with another bacteria causing the second bacteria to also become resistant to antibiotics. Kind of like file sharing on the internet. The second bacterium does not need to mutate (change its DNA) or even be exposed to the antibiotic. It just needs to be exposed to another bacterium that has resistance. Thus, resistance can spread quickly. Whenever bacteria are exposed to antibiotics, some are killed and the antibiotic resistant ones quickly share their plasmids to protect other bacteria against the antibiotic. This is the case with Staph. The Methicillin resistant strain, MRSA, can only dominate in the presence of antibiotics.Once a person is exposed to antibiotics, the resistant bacteria become a greater portion of the population of bacteria (staph) that occur on the skin. When a break in the skin or weakness in the immune system occurs, an infection results. The resulting infection cannot be eradicated with antibiotics. If the immune system is weak enough, the person dies: life over.
So, dying of MRSA is a 3 step process. The first step is exposure to the antibiotics so that resistance can develop. The second step is having an injury or break in the skin so that the resistant bacteria can enter the body. The third step is having an immune system that is too weak to fight the infection. If any step is missing, the person who has MRSA is not harmed or has no symptoms.
Most people that have MRSA on their skin have no symptoms because steps 2 or 3 above are absent. About 87% of diagnosed cases survive the disease because the immune system is strong enough to fight it or there is no break in the skin.
Understanding this explains why there is no person to person spread and isolation or quarantine is not effective.
PREVENTING MRSA INFECTION
The first step in preventing MRSA is to avoid exposing yourself to antibiotics. This means not eating livestock that have been fed antibiotics and not drinking water that may have antibiotics in it.
This may seem difficult but it is doable. Since antibiotics have been isolated from tap water, streams, and farm animals, these things are to be avoided.
This may sound negative but there are positive steps to take. Eat only meats from animals that have not been treated with antibiotics. This means fish (except shrimp from China – it is treated with antibiotics), organic meats and organic dairy products. It is important to read the label carefully to be sure it says it has not been treated with antibiotics.
When drinking water, drink only filtered water. Most antibiotics are removed by a simple carbon filter. So, the common Reverse osmosis or distilled waters would be free of antibiotics.
Ok, now that you have minimized your exposure to antibiotics, it is important to addres step 2 in the MRSA infection process; avoid getting breaks in the skin. I leave the details to your imagination. If you do get a break in the skin, wash the area. No, you do not need to use antibacterial soap because the organism is resistant or will become resistant from exposure to antibiotics. The only reason to wash the area is to REMOVE MRSA if it is present.
Step 3 in the process is a weak immune system. The good news here is that the immune system has to be really weak to secumb to MRSA. Strengthening it is easy to do.
Eliminate all sugar
Eliminate all processed foods – eat fruits and
vegetables – raw and cooked
Drink plenty of water.
The water allows the immune system to flush out the MRSA and remove it from the body.
Hand washing would not be expected to curtail the spread of MRSA but do it any way. It is good manners.
FYI the CDC has a NNIS (National Nosocomial Infection Surveillance System) division that keeps statistics on nosocomial infection rates. This means the type and number of hospital acquired infections. MRSA is in this category. A search for the 2007 report referred me to a 2006 report which referred me to a 2004 report on their website. The latest year for which infection numbers are published is 1998. That’s right. With a 3 to 9 year lag in reporting, it is imperative that the little guy have a home defense plan. Later this week, I will tell you about herbal measures you can take to protect yourself.
Dr Jennifer Daniels, MD/MBA
Vitalitycapsules.com
DISCLAIMER: INFORMATION IN THIS BLOG REPRESENTS INFORMATION BASED ON THE EXPRIENCE, EDUCATION AND RESEARCH DONE BY DR DANIELS. IT IS NOT MEDICAL ADVICE. NOTHING HERE IS MEANT TO CURE, DIAGNOSE OR TREAT ANY CONDITION
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