Doctors rarely deviate from standard protocol treatments and most have no training or experience with antibiotic alternatives for C. difficile. Antibiotic drugs are both the number one cause and the number one treatment for C. diff. infections. This contradiction can be both confusing and frustrating.
Taking antibiotics for a UTI, dental procedure, sinus infection or some other type of infection is the number one cause of C. difficile infections. And if you get a C. diff. infection, antibiotics such as Vancomycin are the standard treatment that your doctor will prescribe.
[continue reading…]
What you eat has a dramatic effect on your health and your ability to heal from infections. In fact, a person’s diet is usually the key to overcoming a chronic cycle of recurring infections. But the importance of your diet is usually overlooked or even dismissed your doctor and the mainstream medical system.
Consider how your car works. By design, your car only works if the right kind of fuel is used. What happens if you put diesel fuel into an unleaded car? At best, it will belch black smoke and lurch down the road making weird noises. And what would happen if you put water or sugar into your gas tank? You’d be lucky if your car even started, and the damage done to your engine would be difficult and expensive or even impossible to fix.
The car example above is how your body works too. Some foods are recognized by your body and they help keep your systems running properly. But other foods and ingredients stress and inflame your body, inflame your GI system, feed infections and weaken your immune system. The trouble is, there’s a lot of conflicting information about what a healthy diet looks like. And C. diff. infections present special challenges when it comes to what foods you can tolerate.
[continue reading…]
We hear from people all the time who are told by their doctor that they don’t need probiotics for C. difficile. The doctor usually says that there’s no scientific evidence for using probiotics, or that probiotics are a waste of money.
If you’re like most people, you trust your doctor to give you sound medical advice. But the truth is, probiotics are backed by science and have been helping people with C. diff. and other health problems for decades.
Huge Gaps in Doctor’s Training
Most mainstream medical doctors have no training and no experience with any alternative treatments such as probiotics. Therefore, alternative options, no matter how effective, are totally unknown to most doctors.
There are also very powerful forces in the drug industry, insurance industry, the AMA and the FDA that disfavor alternatives and make them next to impossible to be widely used or even known to doctors.
[continue reading…]
A new study [https://www.pharmacytimes.com/view/new-research-confirms-high-toxin-levels-linked-to-more-severe-c-difficile-infection] shows that the amount of C. difficile toxins A and B in the gut is directly linked with the severity of infection symptoms. These symptoms, including diarrhea, stomach pain and nausea, result from C. diff. toxins damaging and destroying tissues inside the intestines.
“While prior studies had shown a possible association between stool toxin levels and clinical outcomes, this study was the first of its kind to convincingly demonstrate that the concentration of C. difficile toxins influences disease severity.”
– Carolyn D Alonso MD
[continue reading…]
Have you ever driven your car with the emergency break on? It’s an easy thing to do and it can take a while before you notice. At first, the car just feels a little sluggish, so you give it a more gas. But it gets worse as you pick up speed and begin to realize something isn’t working right.
[continue reading…]
Most people who have had a fecal transplant that I hear from say they experienced good results, at least in the short term. Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) has always been controversial for a number of reasons, including unknown long-term effectiveness and the procedure’s repulsive perception by patients.
But as a microbiologist, one of my biggest concerns had always been that dangerous infections might spread from the donor to the patient through the donor’s stool. Apparently that fear was well founded, according to a recent warning from the FDA.
[continue reading…]
All of the bacteria and other microorganisms or flora living on and inside you make up your microbiome. More than any other part of your body, your microbiome drives your immune system and is the focal point for infections like C. difficile.
Did you know that the microbiome begins to form before birth, or that the foundation of the microbiome is built by age 3? The first two years of your baby’s life are when the most dramatic and influential changes happen to the gut flora. And these changes will persist, for better or for worse, for the rest of your child’s life.
There are many things that affect your baby’s microbiome. It all starts with your own health before birth. How you give birth, breastfeeding, how you introduce foods and exposure to antibiotic drugs all play an important role in your baby’s microbiome development 1,2. Below are five key ways to build your baby’s microbiome to support good health for the rest of their lives.
[continue reading…]
Have you ever wondered why some people experience great results taking probiotics while others notice nothing? Or have you tried different probiotic products but seen few or no results?
If so, you’re not alone. With so many probiotic products on the market and so much advertising it’s hard to know which probiotics are best. But to recognize the best ones, you first have to understand how probiotics work and things that go into making a good probiotic product.
Michelle’s Free Video e-Course on Probiotics
[continue reading…]
C. difficile is at the top of the list of superbug threads in the U.S. 1 and infections continue to grow in number and increase in severity 2. One of the biggest challenges with C. difficile is that there are only a few antibiotic drugs that work against it, and one of those drugs (Flagyl) has lost much of its effectiveness in recent years.
Therefore in 2017, the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) and the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) released new guidelines 3 for which drugs should be prescribed for C. difficile. They also listed a relatively new and rather unorthodox treatment option for people with recurring infections.
[continue reading…]
Most people don’t like going to the dentist, but this will make you think twice about your next visit. While you may expect to come home with a tooth ache, you don’t expect to wind up with a C. difficile infection.
Antibiotic use is a leading cause of C. diff infections. Antibiotics also damage your protective gut flora and weaken your immune system. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now admits that these drugs lead to antibiotic resistant superbug infections which can be difficult or impossible to treat.
So you don’t want to take antibiotics unless you absolutely have to. While a prescription from your doctor is the most common way to be prescribed antibiotics, a new report1 shows that dentists are a significant and overlooked source of antibiotic prescribing.
[continue reading…]