We used to live in a world where people got sick from exposure to feces and lives were saved with antibiotics. Now we live in a world where people are dying from antibiotics and their lives are being saved by feces.
--a colleague

In the field, some practitioners will pack an open wound with black soil to help it heal. You can get black peat that is used for this purpose and others. It is not pasteurized or sterilized in any way; it is full of living organisms. After the battle of Shiloh in the US civil war, soldiers whose wounds glowed in the dark had better survival. The organism (Photorhabdus luminescens) that was growing in their wounds came from the guts of nematodes living in the soil. Presumably this organism outcompeted the pathogenic ones. This kind of antibiotic mechanism cannot be ignored when antibiotic drugs are increasing ineffective.

( More about the biology, and the source, behind cut.Collapse )

My notes are behind the cut. These ladies review some recent FDA approvals and critique the process. The upshot is that the FDA is fast-tracking drugs without following their own rules regarding the supposedly scientific and independent review process. My take: Don't Use New RX drugs until they've been on the market at least 10 years. Otherwise YOU are part of the longterm followup studies that they aren't doing before approval.

SOURCE
http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2013/01/25/antibiotics-when-science-and-wishful-thinking-collide/
( my notes on Zuckerman & Yttri articleCollapse )

The Russians have known about phages and used them to treat severe infections since the 1930's. New research shows that lots of phages live in mucus. Wherever there is mucus there is likely to be a large population of phages--including mucus produced by other species such as sea coral, plants, etc.

Phages are viruses that use bacterial cells to replicate in. They can also insert new DNA into bacteria, and they are able to evolve quickly enough to keep up with changing resistance patterns. Big Pharma is not putting any money toward phage research because phage therapy would compete with antibiotic sales, and as we know, for them, the bottom line IS the bottom line. They want us to think that phages are dangerous. But according to Dr Mercola a normal human produces approximately a quart of mucus (snot) daily in the upper respiratory tract, most of which we swallow. So we are phage central already.
( notes from Mercola's new article on phagesCollapse )

NOT GRAS per FDA
( notesCollapse )

Newly Emerging and Resistant Infections--Can Plan Antimicrobials and Probiotics Help?
greatest threat to human health: acquisition of resistance by micro-organisms
now there's a strain of Neisseria gonorrhea which is resistance to all antibiotics

less than 100 years ago we didn't have abx
average RX of Abx in US: 1/person/year
( notesCollapse )

Carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae, that is. It is resistant to nearly all antibiotics, and according to the Guardian killed 25,000 people in Europe last year. CRKP has been reported in 36 US states so far and is sure to be present in others. LA County longterm care facilities may have lots of it. Antibiotic resistant micro-organisms are best beaten using the naturopathic principle of strengthening the innate healing ability of the organism: there's no bug that can beat a healthy immune system!

SOURCE
http://current.com/news/93141801_antibiotic-superbugs-crkp-mrsa.htm?xid=PTNiGoog
( notesCollapse )