Superbugs – Mankind’s Greatest Health Threat?

By Andreas Moritz

The subject of superbugs is a topic that is becoming increasingly important for many people right now. We are now collectively facing the serious consequences of combating infections with medical drugs instead of understanding the real reasons behind infection and subsequently treating them in ways that truly benefit the body, not harm it.

The antibiotic approach to treating infections is costing human society more than anyone could have anticipated. The bugs that were ‘successfully’ subdued with antibiotics for decades are now taking revenge by producing what is known as ‘antibiotic-resistant organisms’, i.e. superbugs that defy antibiotic treatment.

Some 100,000 Americans suffer potentially deadly infections each year from a drug-resistant ‘staph superbug’. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), more people now die from these superbugs than from AIDS diseases. Recent nationwide outbreaks of infections caused by superbugs killed teenagers in U.S. schools, reflecting the natural consequence of indiscriminate and irresponsible use of antibiotics in this country.

Just a few days ago the media reported about a new study that showed 47 percent of the meat sold in the United States is contaminated with antibiotic-resistant organisms. Most cattle in the US are pumped full with antibiotics for infections they develop as result of improper feeds, growth hormones, and unhealthy living conditions. If you handle such a piece of germ-infested meat and then touch a fruit or vegetable and subsequently eat it, you may subsequently become infected with a potentially deadly germ, or so we are told.

We are now being warned about an imminent new epidemic that involves superbugs. Before the recent announcement that superbugs are infesting nearly half of US meat supplies, in March 2011 health officials warned that California is being hit by a superbug. Over 350 cases of Carbapenem-Resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae, CRKP, have been reported in Los Angeles County alone. The CDC announced a 40 percent mortality rate for those who become infected. Of course, antibiotics are ineffective against this superbug. Now it appears that the disease has spread to most of the country. Should we all be scared?

Officials are saying that The CRKP bug is mostly impacting hospital patients, elderly patients at nursing homes, and other long-term care facilities. These are the places where antibiotics are most frequently and often unnecessarily administered. However this assessment is outdated and no longer valid.

Previously only found in hospital settings, drug-resistant staph germs are now also spreading through prisons, gyms and locker rooms, and poor urban neighborhoods. They can enter the blood, kidneys, liver, lungs and muscles around the heart. Most cases exhibit life-threatening bloodstream infections. However, about 10 percent of the cases involved the so-called flesh-eating disease, according to a study led by researchers at the federal CDC. It is estimated that 18,650 people die annually from this particular superbug, which is about 1,500 more than those who die from AIDS in the U.S. each year.

Bacteria Are Smarter Than We Think

It is a law of nature that every living organism wants to live and survive for as long as it possibly can. Bacteria that are repeatedly exposed to antibiotics will, therefore, try to become immune to them. To survive such assaults, bacteria have their own sophisticated defense strategies, which are in a way similar to ours when we need to defend ourselves against invasive bacteria or viruses. One possible way for bacteria to evade an antibiotic attack is to mutate their genes. As a result, the bacteria become resistant to the active ingredients of a drug, which subsequently renders the drug ineffective.

You may have wondered why so many brands of antibiotics stay on the market for relatively short periods of time. One reason for this is that the bacteria keep outsmarting the antibiotics, and more powerful drugs are then needed kill the newly created strains of bacteria. Another reason for withdrawing brands from the market is the increasingly frequent occurrence of serious side effects that arise from repeatedly giving the drugs to the same patients.

The more we use these drugs, the more resistant the bacteria will become. Top researchers in this field already admit that they are fighting a losing battle. We have overused antibiotics to a degree that every disease-causing bacterium has now developed mutated versions that resist at least one antibiotic.

When an antibiotic attacks a colony of bacteria, most of them die. Yet some of the microbes survive because they harbor mutant genes that resist destruction. These mutant bacteria then pass on their resistant genes to other bacteria, and within 24 hours each of them may have left an estimated 16,777,220 offspring, equally resistant to the antibiotic. The problem is that you can never predict whether this will happen to you when your doctor gives you an antibiotic.

Bacterial Warfare Leads to Self Destruction

But the nightmare doesn’t stop here. The mutant bacteria begin to share their resistant genes with other unrelated microbes they contact, making all sorts of microorganisms resistant to treatment as well. The well-known microbiologist Stanley Falkow once said that bacteria are ‘clever little devils’ that can become resistant to drugs they’ve never met and anticipate confrontations with other ones.

In this way, relatively harmless bacteria turn into superbugs, capable of evading any attack by medical drugs. They lurk particularly in places where antibiotics are most often used, i.e. hospitals and nursing homes. According to recent research findings, five to ten percent of all people checking into hospitals today are going to get infected as a result of antibiotic-resistant bacteria lodging within these buildings.

Except for the sterile environment of surgery theatres, the superbugs can be found riding on dust particles of the heating and air-conditioning systems, in bathrooms and toilets, and even in the food. They account for most of the deaths in hospitals today. The superbugs ‘choose’ patients whose immune systems have already been compromised as a result of sickness, injury, surgery, and/or previous encounters with antibiotics.

In healthy people with a strong immune system, these bugs can live on their skin or in their noses without infecting them. In other words, under normal circumstances, we can live with the bugs without ever getting infected and, even if we did get infected, our body would deal with them effectively while becoming immune to them. However, this natural resistance to the bugs decreases drastically with the first course of antibiotics taken for a simple infection. Vaccines, which also contain antibiotics, are of course, a leading cause of an increasingly widespread occurrence of superbugs, given the number of people who have been and still are being vaccinated against infectious diseases, including the flu (for more details, check out my new book, Vaccine-nation: Poisoning the Population, One Shot at a Time).

Superbugs Are Not The Enemy

Because of the excessive use of antibiotics through mass vaccination and inside and outside of hospitals, antibiotic-resistant organisms have now become the most common cause of infection. To make matters worse, in many countries people can now acquire antibiotics over the counter.

Since precise dosage depends on the individual and the potency of the infection, and since there is no clear time limit to the number of courses a person may require to kill all the germs, antibiotics can never be considered ‘safe’. Interrupted intake or too low a drug dose can encourage the growth of resistant bacteria, which may allow them to be passed on to other people as well. This may increase the risk of infection for those who are near a person who takes antibiotics and may explain why infection is higher in families where they have been used before. However, to become infected, other predisposing factors must be in place, such as poor diet, vaccination which suppresses the immune system, low vitamin D levels due to lack of regular sun exposure, and inadequate personal hygiene, among other reasons.

Indiscriminate use of antibiotics seems to be doing more damage than we can even begin to understand. Antibiotics are among the most powerful immune-suppressants that exist. Most people who are ill and die don’t actually die from their diseases. They die from a massive build up to toxins and a depleted immune system, both of which serve as an open invitation for opportunistic bacterial infections. This applies to cancer, AIDS, and most other so-called “killer diseases”. Autopsies revealed that many of the patients who died from an “AIDS” disease had never actually been infected with HIV but were killed by antibiotic-resistant superbugs.These bugs cause similar symptoms to the ones considered AIDS diseases. It is difficult to determine how many millions of AIDS victims are actually victims of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, or rather what allows them to infect the body. Our ignorance and the resistance to live in harmony with the laws of nature and take care of our basic needs combined with the incessant demand for a magic bullet to quickly put a stop to an illness, are the real enemy here.

Lessons To Be Learned

Many people have contacted me with the question whether there is a cure for infection with Clostridium difficile (CD).CD is a spore-forming bacillus that is responsible for the development of antibiotic-associated diarrhea and colitis. While CD was first described in 1935 as a part of the fecal flora of healthy newborns, the regular exposure of babies to antibiotics through vaccines and medications for minor infections has converted this beneficial bacillus into a potentially fatal superbug that can lead to the destruction of the entire digestive system, and wasting.

Unfortunately, I have seen many people deteriorate this dramatically because of the temptation to rid the body of an infection with antibiotics. CD is largely due to past use of antibiotics, chronic vitamin D deficiency (vitamin D regulates the genes responsible for natural antibiotic secretions), lack of sleep, emotional stress, all of which can lead to an unbalanced intestinal flora, which, in turn, diminishes the level of immune health.

Even though, CD comes with a certain risk, targeting the already resistant bacteria with more antibiotics (which is common practice) practically removes any chances of recovery.

It is not possible to outsmart or root out bacteria that are engaged in infecting cells that have already been damaged by antibiotics, eating nutrient-deprived foods, or chronic vitamin D deficiency. In US hospitals, where over 20 percent of patients become infected with CD, patients are given the lowest quality food you can find, sunlight is avoided at all cost, and antibiotics are administered around the clock. These are the perfect conditions for breeding and spreading superbugs.

As long as the underlying condition (damaged, weak, toxic cells) exists, specific bacteria will be drawn to those areas and infect these cells. Bacterial infection is always host-specific. That’s why not every person who is exposed to staph aureus, for example, will become infected with it. In fact, if exposed to it, only a fraction of people will become infected, namely those who are already unhealthy, like patients in a hospital or those with a compromised immune system. And as I have already mentioned, a major cause is vaccination during childhood and also adulthood: all vaccines suppress and damage the immune system. Bacterial infection cannot occur in healthy cells, even if it involves superbugs. The cell environment and cell condition determines whether an infection will or will not occur.

The outdated medical approach to dealing with infection is based on the germ theory of Louis Pasteur, which has been proven wrong by Pasteur himself at his death bed, and more recently, by documented research. It is heavily flawed and bound to fail.

The existence of antibiotic resistant organisms doesn’t show that these germs are vicious monsters. Nothing in nature is unnecessary or useless. It merely shows that they evolved into mutant bacteria to do the job they are designed to do, namely, to infect and decompose what is no longer needed and useful. If destructive germs were rooted out, life on the planet would stop. We would all suffocate in waste matter and toxins that could no longer be decomposed. The earth would be littered with corpses of humans and animals that could never decay.

Is There Any Hope For Us?

There are natural antibiotics that have also cleansing properties and at the same time stimulate the immune system, e.g. Pau D’ Arco, olive leaf extract, and for more dramatic results, MMS (formerly known as Miracle Mineral Supplement). MMS works regardless whether a germ has mutated or not. Many essential oils also exhibit these characteristics.

Remember, making vitamin D from sun exposure or a vitamin D lamp is essential for recovery. The germicidal wave length of UV light is capable of even destroying antibiotic resistant TB bacteria. Before the era of antibiotics, intense UV light (high altitudes) was used to treat TB, with a near 100% success rate. Today, some hospitals use UV to kill of antibiotic resistant organisms in air-conditioning units. There are clinics that use UV light to radiate blood with UV light which instantly breaks down the infectious germs. Of course, after the treatment, the original causes behind the infection must be dealt with adequately. If antibiotics were used at any time in the past, the liver bile ducts must also be cleaned out through a series of liver and gallbladder flushes. Otherwise, reinjection may occur.

Lastly, the fear and constant concern and emotional stress that often follows a medical diagnosis of infection with a regular bug or a superbug, can prevent recovery altogether. The diagnosis can induce a fight or flight response which quickly suppresses the immune system through the secretion of the stress hormone Cortisol. Fear can also impair digestive functions and lead to a proliferation of the germs.