Were you given Antibiotics prior to your health problems?

I just thought it might be an interesting exercise to see how many people who read this thread were given antibiotics at some point prior to acquiring their health problems, weight issues, etc. Diabetes (especially type 2) is often the culmination of a period of other health issues and/or weight problems.

I was given quite a range of AB's as a child for normal childhood illnesses and undoubtedly the majority were given quite unnecessarily.

I believe that just one course of antibiotics will undermine the gut flora and consequently the immune system enough that we are then far more susceptible to subsequent illnesses and more reliant on ABs. It's a vicious circle.

The move has now been away from Anti-biotics toward Pro-biotics which may be a good move (if it is done properly), but for many, the damage may have already cost them years of problems.

Certainly, rather than destroying the gut flora we should be doing everything we can to support and strengthen it, because it is such a crucial part of the immune system. Things like Swine Flu are a testing ground for the strength of the nations' immunity. Some will succumb badly, others may succumb lightly, and still others may not even realise they had it. Many will not catch it at all. Why? Because they have a strong immune system.

If we have a gut that has had the 'soldiers' destroyed and rogue pathogenic microbes have got their feet under the table then who knows what damage they could inflict. They consume vital nutrients, produce copious amounts of different toxins, alter processes within the body for their own ends and just behave very parasitically, so the fact that we end up with Diabetes, Obesity, Arthritis, Depression, et al is not so much of a surprise.

On top of that we provide them with a continuous feast of yummy carbs and remove the saturated fats that would help to destroy them. Is it any wonder that the NHS is groaning under the weight of sick people? Of course, the only treatment they can offer you for bacterial overgrowth is more antibiotics which don't cure it but just knock it all back for a while until it comes back with even more vengeance!

Sorry to say, the poll system didn't really do what I hoped it would, but you live and learn. Not sure if I can take it off now.

I do feel that antibiotics may have their place and be necessary in certain circumstances - I for one would not like to be faced with something like Necrotising Fasciitis without them, but my issue with them was over the indiscriminate use of them over the last 50 years.

Fleming stated when he introduced Penicillin to the World that not only should their use be 'restrained' but that yoghurt should be consumed as a support to the gut. If anyone ever had taken any notice of him in that regard, it soon went out of the window. When being given them I have never been told by anyone in the Medical Profession to take yoghurt.

The Medical Profession has pulled back from dishing them out willy-nilly now (there are posters in our local surgery stating that) - they have finally witnessed enough bacterial resistance to facilitate that, and resistance is where antibiotics fall over. Sooner or later the bugs get the better of them and for certain things they often are only a temporary fix until the beggars come back stronger than ever.

But in making the bugs stronger, they are also making us more vulnerable and less able to fight them off. So they create a vicious circle. And we are stuck in the middle.

I was given them as a child on many occasions - for childhood bugs that were generally viral and didn't even need them. I became a podgy teenager, became very fatigued by the age of 15, had systemic Candida, and gained weight over the next decade or two peaking at 16 stone. I knew there had to be a link somewhere, and the antibiotics-kill-all-bugs-both-good-and-bad-but-don't-touch-the-yeasts concept has made more sense than anything.

Although I have lost some weight I haven't yet got much energy back, and I don't expect to until I have beaten off the gut bugs. They are robbing my body of my energy and nutrients. I have been fatigued for nearly 40 years and I am blowed if I am gonna let the blighters get me!

If you read my previous thread about stomach bypass curing Diabetes and the possible link with SIBO, perhaps this thread will make more sense.

I think your last sentence says it all. Yes, getting thrush after taking antibiotics is very common and the IBS is a reaction to that. After all the antibiotics kill the gut bacteria both bad and good but don't touch the yeasts.

That gives them house room and nothing to defend the gut from them. As I often quote 'kill the soldiers and the city is undefended'. Because people are not advised to take probiotics to replace the bacteria then it can only get worse.

Unfortunately we can't see what is going on down there and what the beggars are up to.

I have spent a lifetime battling against yeasts, fungal issues and SIBO. Whilst I have managed to get the yeasts under control, the SIBO is a different matter. Yes, I could take antibiotics, but what normally seems to happen is that whilst the ABs knock it all back for a while, they soon come back again and with a vengeance. They are now stronger and more resistant. So you try a different one, and so it goes on. What if I get to a point where they are so strong nothing will touch them?

Perhaps they may be necessary in certain circumstances, and maybe they work in certain situations, but in others they just make the whole thing a lot worse.

People find with many drugs that the common element seems to be that they end up having to take more, or different , or stronger as time goes on.

People have an antibiotic, then they get thrush. They go to the Doctor and get Nystatin, or Flagyl or some other prep. That works for a few weeks, or maybe a few months and then they have to go back. Funnily enough it doesn't have the same effect the next time round. That has happened to me.

An antibiotic will work if it is used for the first time on a particular problem that can be dealt with and done and dusted. If there is any risk of any residual 'survivors', the next time it won't work nearly as well. In the meantime though it may have weakened our natural defences.

I think really that my argument, to a certain extent is surely, if you build the walls strong enough and have a full and efficient fighting force then they will fight off any attackers or intruders. The stronger the gut flora, the easier it is to fight off any pathogenic bugs and stop them getting a hold.

Antibiotics destroy and undermine - and I think the undermine bit is more insidious. Probiotics build and support. And that is the big difference.

If we have a very strong immune system we won't get problems with 'Strep throat' or 'tooth abcess' because the immune system will deal with it.

As I just posted on another thread, we have a friend. She is in her late 60's and looks at least 10 years younger. She has hardly had a days' illness in her life. She has never had antibiotics. And she eats raw garlic sandwiches. She has such a strong immune system she fights everything off.

Undoubtedly diet has played its part - if you have read any of my other posts you will also see that that I believe that the very high-carbohydrate Western Diet has played it's part in fuelling the epidemic rise of obesity and diabetes, etc., but the fact that there are people out there who don't get fat on this diet and who are still relatively healthy does raise questions.

As I keep repeating, I am not against antibiotics per se, or sensible use of them when absolutely necessary, but I do believe that the indiscriminate use of them has caused problems.

I have been given antibiotics over the years - did I ever state that I have not finished any courses? Please don't make assumptions from words that aren't there - UPB, you are a master at that! In fact I don't think I made any mention of unfinished courses at all.

We have a friend (yes, another one) who was put on to antibiotics for 14 months. 14 months!!! Anyone in their right mind knows that if two courses haven't worked then your health problems need further investigation. She didn't know that. As a young woman she trusted her doctor implicitly. What that did to her was completely trash her immune system. She has one health problem after another and succumbs to everything going - in fact it is a miracle she is still here.

Yes that was an extreme experience but even if our antibiotic exposure is spaced out it will still decimate the gut flora and weaken the immune system.

Yes, I am size 16 -18 (thank goodness after years at 24-26!) and T2, but both the weight issues and the diabetes came along long after the exposure to antibiotics. Of course I knew in later years when I had 'educated myself' that probiotics/yoghurt should be taken with and after AB courses, but I didn't know that when I was a child. I didn't know that when I was a teenager. I didn't know that when I was a young adult. By the time I knew that I had got to the point where I was fed up with crawling with Candida and jolly well was going to avoid taking antibiotics if I could help it and so far I have managed ok without them. That's not to say that I won't need or take them in the future though.

I am just trying to look at this logically. Yes, antibiotics kill pathogenic bacteria. But they also kill good bacteria - some of which is not replaced by taking probiotics or yoghurt. Gut bacteria is not just Lactobacillus - there are hundreds of different types doing different things. Who knows what the optimum gut bacteria should be? Once it is destroyed, how can you ever get it back?

Medical Science acknowledges that their understanding in this field is very limited. They don't understand the role of a lot of these bacteria and they don't often even know whether a bacteria is good or bad! It is only comparatively recently that the role of gut bacteria and 'probiotics' has been investigated.

But even the Medical profession can see the benefit of probiotics - our local Hospitals have been conducting a trial of giving pre-op patients probiotics to boost their immunity against Hospital-acquired infections like MRSA and C.Diff, etc.

Babies guts are pretty much sterile when they are born and they pick up their gut bacteria predominantly from their mother, but if her gut bacteria is compromised, how can she pass good flora on to her child? The child then itself has already compromised bacteria and then as the weak gut flora constitutes a weak immune system, succumbs to different infections, has to have antibiotics, which further destroys the delicate gut balance.

Yes, yoghurt is a great probiotic source, but how many people today consume plain live probiotic yoghurt? You may, and I may, but there are an awful lot of people out there whose idea of yoghurt is a sweetened and flavoured dead custardy muck which will do nothing except encourage and feed pathogenic microbes.

I actually ate a pretty good diet. As a child my Mum grew her own veg and some fruit, cooked delicious home-made meals, baked her own, usually wholemeal, bread with flour purchased from the mill. She made jam, wine and all sorts of other wonderful things. She made fruit cake sometimes but we didn't always have a dessert.

I followed her lead. We had wholemeal bread and butter, I would make my own preserves, bake cakes, cook delicious dinners. I did not then, nor do I now serve rubbish to my family. But despite that, my weight issues and fatigue began in my mid-teens for no apparent reason and have bugged me for the last 40 years.

Of course I want to know why. Doesn't everyone? Sorry, but I am not just one of those people who accepts that this is it. it is people like me - those who challenge established ideas and beliefs and who won't give up looking for answers, who very often find them. And those answers don't always come from where we expect them to...........

Thanks so much for the rip-roaring giggle Spiral. That was pretty classic!

Hana - yes, I do believe that antibiotics save lives, but I also feel that they are something of a double edged sword, dispensing help on one hand but damage of some kind or another on the other. I am sure that if you can bounce back from having them without any apparent problems (but then we can't always see what is going on or recognise the signs), then you have done well - many of us are not so fortunate. Granted, many lives have been saved by them, but would those people have been so sick if they had not been exposed to them earlier in life and still had strong immune systems. Other people have had lives blighted by them.

I feel like Spiral, that unless something was pretty bad, I would just let nature take it's course and allow my body to heal with good support. Certainly I have done that over the last 15 years or so, once I realised the pitfalls of taking antibiotics (and any drugs for that matter). I have concentrated more on building my immune system and supporting healing with things like Vitamin C on the rare occasion I do catch anything now (I used to get everything that was going but it passes my by now, generally).

There was an interesting article today in the Daily Mail. It looks at identical twins and the difference between them in some cases, health-wise. One of the experiences is of twin girls, both of whom apparently have the gene for leukemia. One has the disease, the other doesn't. The one with leukemia apparently had a bout of tonsillitis earlier and Doctors believe this may have been the 'trigger'. But, of course, thousands of people get tonsillitis without getting leukemia.

Why blame the illness? Why not blame the treatment? Tonsillitis is the body's normal way of trying to off-load toxins - they are windows to the health of the body and another 'clue-giver'. They are evidence of the macrophages going to work. Although the article doesn't say so, it is pretty likely that she was given antibiotics for the infection. What if they undermined her immune system enough to allow the leukemia to take hold?

I know this may seem pretty controversial, but believe me, I am but one voice in a million who are realising the pitfalls of antibiotic treatment. There are plenty of books and articles and research out there that support this thought and people like Leon Chaitow warned of this 20 or 30 years ago. Some of them make for very uncomfortable reading. Just Google 'antibiotic danger' or something similar and see what comes up.

The pitfalls of antibiotics have been known about since their inception into use over 70 years ago and Fleming warned about the likelihood of resistance, but it has taken all that time for The Establishment to suddenly realise the truth of and the danger in those words.

We have developed this inherent fear of disease. Typical of the Medical Profession, instead of helping us to put up barriers against it, they wait until it gets in, then try to deal with it. Prevention is far better than 'cure'. People have even gone to the Doctor for antibiotics when they have a fever. Fever is the body's way of dealing with unwanted microbes. It raises the core temperature of the body to kill them. They cannot survive over 100 degrees. Not only that, but it will also generally limit the area to the source of the infection. If you cut your finger and microbes enter, your finger will get hot. Fever is not something to be stopped unless it threatens to overwhelm the body and then that is probably because the bacterium/microbe is overwhelming.

One of the biggest culprits of antibiotic exposure in humans now is the use of them in animal welfare. They are thrown at domestic animals, farmed fish and anything else they can throw it at. But we are eating it. They don't have to keep animals alive any longer than it takes to get them into the food chain, but it is having a profound effect on us and our health and constantly weakening and undermining our immunity.

Diseases that we thought had been eradicated, like Tuberculosis, are now making a comeback, and they are proving to be very resistant. MRSA - Staph Aureus is now becoming resistant to the last and strongest antibiotic - Vancomycin. Where will it stop?

Once upon a time we had bugs without antibiotics. Now we have the terrifying prospect of superbugs without antibiotics. The more we learn, the less we know............

Some reading material -

http://innovation.edf.org/page.cfm?tagid=31088

http://www.aphroditewomenshealth.com/ne ... news.shtml (and asthma too is on the increase - what else might they cause!)

http://www.orthomolecular.org/resources ... 4n14.shtml

http://www.typesofbacteria.co.uk/how-do ... teria.html (5500 different types of bacteria in the gut!!!)

http://www.amazon.com/Antibiotic-Parado ... 05&sr=1-14