Homeopathic Healthcare: More Homeopathic Articles
George Guess, MD
Battling Superbugs: The Escalating Problem of Antibiotic Resistance
A very disturbing trend has been taking place in the world for some time now. Not only are new microbes becoming serious pathogens (disease-causing bacteria, viruses, etc), but heretofore common bacteria, which were, before now, easily treated with antibiotics, are becoming increasingly resistant to even our most powerful antibiotics. If this trend continues, we will be facing an extremely serious crisis in modern medicine, according to a recent World Health Organization press release entitled “Drug Resistance Threatens to Reverse Medical Progress.” Physicians will literally have no really useful weapons to deal with many infectious diseases. It’s an alarming scenario, and one which is almost entirely of our own making.
Here are a few interesting facts gleaned from the medical literature. An article appearing in the “New England Journal of Medicine” reported in 2002 an outbreak of Group A Streptococci, the bacterium associated with Strep throat, that was resistant to erythromycin, an antibiotic commonly used to treat such infections. Researchers predict that by the summer of 2004 forty percent of strains of Streptococcus pneumonia, a common cause of pneumonia, will be resistant to both penicillin and erythromycin. A strain of bacteria that normally populates the colon has been found to be considerably more resistant to tetracycline than the same bacteria were thirty years ago. This finding is especially concerning since bacteria have a highly developed capacity to exchange genetic information with other bacteria, regardless of species. So, one benign bacterium which is antibiotic resistant can pass that resistance along to pathogenic (disease-causing) bacteria. Staphylococcal infections are becoming increasingly harder to treat effectively as resistance to essentially all known antibiotics becomes more and more likely. Tuberculosis has displayed a resurgence of late; many of these cases are caused by very antibiotic resistant strains, causing major public health headaches.
Why is antibiotic resistance such a growing problem? As I mentioned above, the problem is largely self-inflicted. Probably the two major causes are common animal agricultural practices and the prescribing habits of physicians. Sub-therapeutic doses of antibiotics are widely used to both prevent disease in livestock and to promote livestock growth. As a result, our animal and dairy food supply is tainted with trace amounts of antibiotics. Because of this long-term exposure, normal bacteria in our digestive tract develop resistance to these antibiotics and pass that resistance along to other bacteria. The other cause, physician prescribing, is also a significant contributor to the problem. Admittedly, antibiotics are often necessary to control serious infectious disease; however, physicians routinely over-prescribe antibiotics in situations where they are not required, much less effective. Many garden variety acute infectious illnesses – colds, sinusitis, ear infections, throat infections, bronchitis, etc. – will resolve spontaneously, without the use of antibiotics. There are clinical studies proving this assertion. Additionally, the majority of these infections are viral in nature and, thus, not even susceptible to antibiotic use. Then, there is the bad habit some doctors have fallen into of prescribing the latest and supposedly greatest antibiotic for relatively minor infections. This latter practice fuels increasing bacterial resistance to some of our newest broad-spectrum antibiotics, a trend which, if it continues, will spell real trouble for medicine.
Truth be told, physicians are not the only ones to blame for this tendency. Part of the problem lies with the public and its expectations of treatment. I recall years ago, as a family practice resident (having been schooled in the need to restrict antibiotic use to only those patients likely to have antibiotic-susceptible infections), experiencing recurring frustration as I would try to educate my patients about the principles of antibiotic use, that viral infections would not respond to antibiotics. So many of these patients refused to listen, being convinced, based on past experience (most probably that of placebo effect) that their colds or sore throats, etc. were always quickly dispatched only after taking an antibiotic. So, I can sympathize with physicians who try to restrict antibiotic use. In some cases they face an uphill battle. The situation is even more difficult when they have no alternatives to suggest to patients other than increased fluids and aspirin, decongestants, etc. Such a limitation puts them in a bind and adds to the pressure to prescribe. There is, thus, an urgent need for physicians to employ or suggest other, more ecological – for the patient and the earth ? means of dealing with these infections.
Several “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) modalities can be of help in the setting of infectious disease. Of these, homeopathic medicine is, without question, the most important and effective alternative approach. An impressive track record exists of homeopathic successes, both historically and in clinical experimental studies. Here are a few of the infectious diseases, some of the more serious ones, for which homeopathy has demonstrated efficacy – plague, scarlet fever, typhus, cholera, yellow fever, smallpox, polio, whooping cough, tularemia, diphtheria, malaria, Lyme disease, influenza. Of course, the more garden variety acute infectious ailments can, in most cases, also be effectively treated with homeopathy. Colds, flus, sinus infections, bladder infections, ear infections, bronchitis, gastroenteritis, etc. are all highly susceptible to homeopathic treatment, with antibiotics being reserved for the few resistant cases.
I can immediately recall a fair number of such patients from my practice – a three-year old child with moderately high fever, circumscribed flushed cheeks, and a middle ear infection relieved by a few doses of Ferrum phosphoricum 30C; a 28 year-old woman with an acute urinary tract infection causing urinary frequency and urgency, burning, and bloody urine relieved within a few hours of her first dose of Cantharis 30C; a 50 year-old woman with walking pneumonia, characterized by a thick rattling cough and difficult expectoration, cured after a few doses of Antimonium tartaricum 200C; a 45 year-old woman with acute sinusitis causing pressing pains in the cheeks which radiated to the teeth and a thick, yellow discharge from the nose, relieved after a two doses of Mercurius 30C. I could give several more examples. The important message here is that homeopathy offers, in most cases, a highly effective first-line defense against infectious disease, one that can enable patients to successfully restore their health without the use of antibiotics.
What is especially fascinating about homeopathy is the way in which it works. It is this presumed mechanism of action that enables it to help patients overcome all classes of infection, whether due to bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites, etc. Homeopathic remedies act to enhance patients’ defense mechanisms such that their innate immune system response to the infective agent is significantly strengthened. Patients then become less susceptible to infection and quickly regain their health. The role of immune system susceptibility should be readily apparent from the dynamics of infectious disease epidemics. In any epidemic, excepting those caused by especially virulent organisms, such as the Ebola virus, the expression of disease varies widely within the group of infected individuals. Some persons die, some become quite ill, some only moderately so, some barely so, and some display no symptoms at all, even though they were clearly exposed. The determining factor in this phenomenon is individual patient resistance, or strength of immune system functioning. Optimize that and microbes are quickly overwhelmed.
Antibiotics take the other approach. They are designed to kill bacteria. Consequently, if the infection is viral in nature, as so many are, they are of no utility. They might even hurt since drug side-effects are not uncommon. Admittedly, we need antibiotics. I wouldn’t want to encounter a case of meningitis or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever or bacterial endocarditis, etc. without one. But we must all, physicians and the public, do are part to minimize their (over) use.
Were homeopathy (and other CAM therapies) employed on a much wider scale for infectious disease, the current rise in antibiotic resistance could be significantly curtailed. My particular vision of an integrative medicine approach to infectious disease is this – families treating themselves with botanical and homeopathic medicine for mild simple acute illnesses, and physicians, schooled to at least some degree in the methods of integrative medicine, employing CAM therapies, especially homeopathy, initially for all but the more seriously ill patients, reserving antibiotics for those patients failing to respond to CAM treatment and the seriously ill. Additionally, the seriously ill patient would ideally be offered simultaneous antibiotic and homeopathic treatment, for in such settings homeopathic medicine can effectively complement conventional medical approaches and enhance favorable patient outcomes. May that vision someday become reality.
Dr. Guess, a family physician, has practiced classical homeopathic medicine for 25 years. He is the editor of the American Journal of Homeopathic Medicine. He practices in Charlottesville. 434-295-0362. Web page: www.doctorguess.com
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Dr. George Guess
2776 Hydraulic Rd, Suite 101
Charlottesville, VA 22901
office: 434-295-0362
fax: 434-295-0798
email: gguessmd@earthlink.net
website: http://www.doctorguess.com/
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