A woman named Beth who uses a computer for a living began to have wrist pain and stopped using her computer immediately. The pain persisted, so she tried taking vitamin B6 and that helped some, but she had to take large doses to get relief. Then Beth realized she was eating a snack food every day that contained yellow dye no. 5 (tartrazine), which depletes vitamin B6. Within days of avoiding yellow dye, her wrist pain began to go away.
Once carpal tunnel gets established in the nerves of the wrist, it is very difficult to treat. It’s important to pay attention to any type of pain in the wrist that doesn’t go away after a few days and to stop doing the aggravating motion immediately.
To aid in healing carpal tunnel, in addition to 50 to 100 mg of vitamin B6 daily you can take ginkgo biloba to improve blood supply to the affected area. Since ginkgo improves circulation to the extremities, it seems a logical choice for carpal tunnel syndrome.
Chapter 14
Antibiotics, Antifungals, and Their Natural Alternatives
Anti-infectives is the general term to describe the drugs we take to fight all kinds of infections such as bacteria, fungi, parasites, and viruses. The types of anti-infectives covered in this chapter are antibiotics, antivirals, and antifungals.
Kill the germ with an antibiotic, and your infection problem—sinus congestion, earache, urinary tract infection, cough—is solved. Right? Well, for the past 50 years, this is how conventional medicine has been treating patients. But 98 percent of those infections would have become better with some very basic care, like rest and fluids. Antibiotics do nothing to get rid of a virus when you have a cold or the flu.
Your life may depend on avoiding antibiotics until you really need them. The notion that the neat solution to every infection is to find the right antibiotic is not only incorrect but also has led us into big trouble. We are addicted to antibiotics. We think they’ll cure everything from cholera to a hangnail. If you think this is an exaggeration, check out these numbers: about 145 million courses of antibiotics are prescribed each year in doctors’ offices and emergency rooms across the United States. Add to this the 190 million doses handed out in American hospitals each year, and you’ve got a good idea of the rampant overuse of these drugs. Data from the National Center for Health Statistics indicates that antibiotics have been given to millions of patients who had viral infections that antibiotics are useless against. And if you think antibiotic abuse isn’t about money, think about the billions of dollars those millions of prescriptions represent.
Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin, warned us nearly a century ago that the overuse of antibiotics would create resistant bacteria. Even Louis Pasteur, the father of germ warfare using antibiotics, is said to have admitted on his deathbed, “The germ is nothing, the terrain is everything.” This was his way of saying that a healthy body and a healthy immune system will fight off most infections, and an unhealthy body and immune system will be susceptible to infection.
In fact, antibiotics are a major cause of recurrent infections, and our overuse of them is breeding highly resistant strains of “superbugs” that are immune to all known types of antibiotics. To add insult to injury, we have lost the war on infectious diseases, even with all these antibiotics and better hygiene. According to a recent press conference held by the American Medical Association, infectious diseases have reemerged as a serious health threat. Just in the past decade, death from infectious diseases has risen a stunning 58 percent worldwide. Even after subtracting the deaths caused by the HIV virus, it’s still up by 22 percent. Most of these deaths are caused by infections in the lungs and the blood that are resistant to antibiotics.
By using antibiotics as a cure-all, the magic bullet has come back to hit us. Every time we take antibiotics, we give harmful bacteria a new opportunity to become resistant. The consequence is that many antibiotics are useless. An increasingly common scenario in American hospitals is a hospitalized patient who gets a hospital-based staph infection or pneumonia that is totally resistant to antibiotics. People with antibiotic-resistant diseases often die.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, each year nearly 2 million patients in the United States get an infection in a hospital. Of those patients, about 90,000 die as a result of their infection. More than 70 percent of the bacteria that cause hospital-acquired infections are resistant to at least one of the drugs most commonly used to treat them. The cost to treat these people with hospital-acquired infections is $1.2 billion each year in the United States.
Tuberculosis is making a comeback because it is now resistant to most antibiotics, along with highly resistant strains of pneumonia. Think twice and question your physician very closely before using an antibiotic.
Superbugs are just one of the downsides of these drugs. According to Canadian researchers, children who receive antibiotics before the age of 1 are more likely to have childhood asthma. Researchers in British Columbia combined the results of seven studies involving about 12,000 children. They found that when a child receives a course of antibiotics before his or her first birthday, that child is twice as likely to develop asthma than a child who receives no antibiotics during that time. Multiple courses in early childhood were found to bump risk higher, with an increase in risk of 16 percent with each course of antibiotics taken before the age of 1.
Antibiotics kill our beneficial gut bacteria, which provide a frontline defense system against harmful bacteria, viruses, and other environmental irritants such as allergens, and toxins such as pesticides. Antibiotics also weaken the immune system, promote the growth of harmful candida, create a friendly environment for parasites, and cause excessive loss of vitamins and minerals through digestive problems. They cause diarrhea and create a susceptibility to food allergies by destroying the protective bacteria that line the gut.
Clearly we need to find other ways to fight infections and to support our immune systems when we get sick. Antibiotics should only be used as a final resort in fighting a potentially life-threatening infection. Before he or she prescribes an antibiotic, your physician should do a culture to find out (1) if bacteria are present, and if so, (2) what strain of bacteria is present and thus what type of antibiotic to give you. Avoid wide-spectrum antibiotics whenever possible.
An Overview of Antibiotics
Antibiotics are anti-infective drugs that destroy specific types of bacteria. Penicillin, cephalosporins, tetracycline, macrolides, and amino-glycosides are some of the more common types of antibiotics. There are many different types of penicillin drugs, but by far the most prescribed penicillins are amoxicillin and the combination amoxicillin and potassium clavulanate (another antibiotic). Some of the brand names of amoxicillin are Amoxil, Trimox, and Augmentin, which you will probably recognize if you have been a parent in the past few decades.
• Penicillins stress the kidneys significantly and are particularly hard on children’s kidneys. If your child has been prescribed a penicillin for more than a week, make sure your physician monitors his or her kidney and liver function.
• Cephalosporins are broad-spectrum antibiotics. The most prescribed of these drugs are Cefaclor, Cephalexin, Duricef, Lorabid, Cefzil, Ceftin, and Suprax.
• Fluoroquinolones are synthetic broad-spectrum bacterial agents. The most common brand name of this drug is Cipro, the antibiotic made famous during the anthrax scares that occurred in the aftermath of 9/11. Side effects can be very serious with this drug, including allergic reactions to sunlight. It also interacts badly with any food that contains caffeine and can produce insomnia, the jitters, and heart palpitations. It can also cause ruptured tendons.
• Tetracycline used to be prescribed much more often than it is today. The most common tetracycline prescribed today is doxycycline. It is prescribed for acne as well as some dangerous infections such as Rocky Mountain spotted fever. This drug is so hard on your liver and kidneys that your physician should monitor the function of these organs periodically to avoid kidney and liver damage.
/> • Macrolide antibiotics are also tough on your body. They are effective for limiting the growth of a variety of infections, but their serious side effects could stay with you permanently. Some patients who had severe reactions to this drug—such as hearing loss, hallucinations, and abdominal pain—had a recurrence of these allergic reactions even after they stopped taking the drug. So don’t take macrolides unless you absolutely have to!
• Neomycin sulfate is the most frequently prescribed aminoglycoside antibiotic. This drug suppresses intestinal bacteria and also has potentially dangerous side effects that necessitate monitoring of both kidney and nerve function during the course of therapy. In fact, the side effects are so common that 8 to 28 percent of patients who take this drug develop impairment of their kidney function. This is another anti-infective to stay away from unless you really need it.
• Antifungal agents, of course, fight fungal infections, and fluconazole is the most popular drug in this class. A single dose of this drug can bring on unpleasant side effects such as nausea and vomiting. Several doses can cause severe reactions, including liver dysfunction and seizures.
Because antibiotics are limited in the types of infections they can effectively fight, physicians are supposed to—but rarely do—determine exactly what kind of infection a patient has before prescribing an antibiotic. Not only does testing tell the physician if the infection is bacterial or viral in nature, but also exactly what kind of virus or bacteria it is. Again, antibiotics only destroy specific kinds of bacteria. If you have an infection that is caused by bacteria or a virus other than the type your prescribed drug kills, then taking that drug will prolong your illness, waste your money, and subject you to unnecessary side effects.
Antibiotics can be very effective in combating bacterial infections. However, many people are allergic to antibiotics and experience severe allergic reactions—even fatal ones. You can experience many varied reactions, but they usually begin with skin rashes, followed by one or more of the following: itching, hives, severe diarrhea, shortness of breath, wheezing, sore throat, nausea, vomiting, fever, swollen joints, and unusual bleeding or bruising. If any of these symptoms occur after you take an antibiotic, contact your physician immediately.
If You’re Taking Antibiotics, Don’t Reach for An Antacid
Antibiotics can play havoc on your digestive system, bringing on unpleasant symptoms such as gas, diarrhea, abdominal cramping, and indigestion. It would be natural to rifle through your medicine cabinet for Tums, Pepto-Bismol, or another brand of antacid to relieve yourself of these discomforts. But don’t. If you take an antacid with most antibiotics (particularly tetracycline or quinolone antibiotics), you’ll be reducing their effectiveness by 50 to 90 percent. When taking an antibiotic, hold yourself back from taking an antacid or you’ll undermine the antibiotic’s ability to fight your infection.
Antacids That Interfere with Antibiotics
Antibiotics May Reduce the Effectiveness of Birth Control Pills
In the digestive tract, antibiotics kill bacteria that are key players in maintaining blood levels of contraceptive hormones. Studies have shown that unintended pregnancies have occurred from a birth control pill and antibiotic interaction. (The same reaction may be true for antifungal medications, too.) Even the most vocal critics of this theory recommend that women receiving broad spectrum antibiotics with oral contraceptives should use alternative means to protect themselves from unplanned pregnancies.
Kinds of Antibiotics
Examples of Penicillins
Amoxicillin (Amoxil, Trimox, Augmentin, Biomox, Polymox, Wymox)
Ampicillin (Polycillin-N, Amicillin, Omnipen, Totacillin, Principen, D-Amp)
Ampicillin with probenecid (Probampacin)
Ampicillin and sulbactam (Unasyn)
Bacampicillin HCl (Spectrobid)
Carbenicillin indanyl (Geocillin)
Cloxacillin (Tegopen, Cloxapen)
Dicloxacillin (Pathocil, Dynapen, Dycill)
Methicillin (Staphcillin)
Mezlocillin (Mezlin)
Nafcillin (Unipen, Nafcil, Nallpen)
Oxacillin (Bactocill, Prostaphlin)
Penicillin G (Pfizerpen, Pentids, Wycillin, Permapen, Bicillin)
Penicillin V (Veetids, V-Cillin, Beepen, Betapen, Robicillin)
Piperacillin (Pipracil)
Piperacillin and tazobactam (Zosyn) Ticarcillin (Ticar)
Ticarcillin and clavulanate (Timentin)
Antibiotics That May Affect Oral Contraceptives
What Do They Do in the Body? Halt bacterial infections.
What Are They Used For? Treating mild to moderately severe penicillin-sensitive bacterial infections, including pneumonia, some respiratory tract infections, ear infections, some sexually transmitted diseases, and meningitis.
What Are the Possible Side Effects? Mild to serious and occasionally fatal immediate allergic reactions. These reactions can include skin rashes, fever, problems with breathing, wheezing, abnormality of the tongue, sore throat, swollen joints, chills, water retention, breathing problems, and death.
Penicillins also can create distress in the digestive and eliminative systems such as cramping, abdominal pain, gas, vomiting, bloody diarrhea, rectal bleeding, upset stomach, taste abnormalities, and kidney inflammation.
Possible side effects also include imbalance of blood chemistry, including suppression of the immune system and anemia. These drugs can also produce lethargy, dizziness, convulsions, anxiety, depression, combativeness, insomnia, seizures, and hyperactivity.
These drugs are particularly hard on young kidneys. Your child’s physician should be monitoring your child’s organ system function closely when your child is taking this type of drug.
If you are receiving this drug through an IV drip, you should know that potassium or sodium is added to the solution and can cause an imbalance of those minerals in your body.
CAUTION!
Think Twice About Taking These Drugs If . . .
• You have an allergic reaction to any type of penicillin.
• You have asthma, hay fever, or other allergies. If you take penicillin or any other antibiotic, your allergic reactions to it could be immediate and severe.
• You bleed or bruise easily or have any kind of kidney dysfunction.
What Are the Interactions with Food? Taking food with most penicillins reduces their effectiveness. (Amoxil, Augmentin, and Trimox are exceptions. They can be taken without regard to food.)
Having an alcoholic drink while taking these drugs can produce uncomfortable symptoms such as headaches, stomach cramping, and vomiting.
Acidic fruit juices, sodas, wines, carbonated drinks, syrups, and other acidic beverages decrease the effectiveness of penicillins. Don’t take penicillins with acidic food or drink.
What Nutrients Do They Throw out of Balance or Interact With? Vitamin K, amino acids, calcium, folic acid, magnesium, potassium, and vitamins B6 and B12 are all depleted.
What Else to Take If You Take These Drugs. Supplements of the preceding nutrients. Take them two hours after a meal. Also be sure to take probiotics during and after a course of antibiotics. See the section on natural alternatives at the end of the chapter.
Examples of Cephalosporins
Cefaclor (Raniclor, Ceclor)
Cefadroxil (Duricef)
Cefamandole (Mandol)
Cefazolin (Ancef, Kefzol, Zolicef)
Cefepime (Maxipime, Kefurox, Zinacef)
Cefixime (Suprax)
Cefmetazole (Zefazone)
Cefonicid (Monocid)
Cefoperazone (Cefobid)
Cefotaxime (Claforan)
Cefotetan (Cefotan)
Cefoxitin (Mefoxin)
Cefpodoxime Proxetil (Vantin)
Cefprozil (Cefzil)
Ceftazidime (Fortaz, Tazidime, Ceptaz, Tazicef)
Ceftibuten (Cedax)
Ceftizoxime (Cefizox)
Ceftriaxone (Rocephin)
Cefuroxime (Ceftin)
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br /> Cephalexin (Keflex, Keftab, Biocef)
Cephalothin (Keflin)
Cephapirin (Cefadyl)
Cephradine (Velosef)
Loracarbef (Lorabid)
What Do They Do in the Body? They are related to penicillins and destroy specific bacterial infections.
What Are They Used For? Halting bacterial infections.
What Are the Possible Side Effects? Allergic reactions, particularly for people who have a history of allergy, asthma, or hay fever. These reactions include rashes, open sores, breathing difficulties, vaginal infections, dizziness, drowsiness, nervousness, insomnia, confusion, and anemia.
Intestinal problems are common when using these drugs. They can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach and abdominal cramping, gas, and heartburn. A more serious side effect is colitis, or inflammation of the colon. This problem results in colicky-like cramps and either diarrhea or constipation, and is caused by a depletion of vitamin K as well as an imbalance of the friendly and unfriendly bacteria in the intestinal tract.
These drugs are also particularly hard on kidney and liver function and have caused liver dysfunction, jaundice, and kidney failure. Because of this, your physician should monitor you closely if you are elderly or debilitated. Children should also be watched closely for any indications of kidney or liver system dysfunction. These drugs can cause seizures in people with kidney problems.
Like penicillin, these drugs also create changes in blood chemistry that suppress the immune system and can cause abnormal and heavy bleeding and mineral imbalances such as anemia.
CAUTION!
Think Twice About Taking These Drugs If . . .
Prescription Alternatives Page 35