30,000-fold difference

Thanks for sharing my friend.

Blaser strikes again! Lots of bro-love to him. It's amazing how he went from NPR to CNN in such a short time frame. Now that Miley Cyrus suffered an adverse reaction to antibiotics and had to cancel her tour, I think we can expect our missing microbes to get a lot of well deserved attention.

Our diverse microbes, with their millions of genes helping us resist disease, are the guerrilla warriors defending the home domain -- as long as we protect them. But recent studies suggest that otherwise normal people already have lost 15% to 40% of their microbial diversity and the genes that accompany it.

Quite honestly, I continue to regret being duped into taking antibiotics for basically a viral condition that would have gone away in time. It nearly landed me in a wheelchair and if I had known in advance on the futility of it, then I would have never opted to take them. Misinformation is the most fatal thing in the world.

If you follow the Cochrane publications on antibiotics, they concluded that 90% of sore throats go away in a week and the remaining 5% don't require antibiotics. The rates of rheumatic fever in sanitized societies are so low that there's a greater chance of getting hit by a car. Yesterday, I talked to a lady who was put on the Miley Cyrus antibiotic (cephalexin) for a sinus issue and had to be hospitalized 4 days later for life threatening C. diff. She said "doctors are literally killing us".

Post Edited (Guardian7) : 4/28/2014 6:21:44 PM (GMT-6)

I was on an antibiotic from the same family (Cefnidir) in February/March for a really bad sinus infection and felt like I'd been hit by a bus the whole time I was on it. I was weak, could barely get out of bed, couldn't eat, couldn't think straight for the two weeks I was on it. I didn't quite realize what was going on (because I'd been sick previously) until a couple days after my last dose when the effects of the antibiotic started to go away. Outside of a really bad GI reaction to Augmentin, this was easily the worst time I've had with an antibiotic.

I also spent a lot of my childhood on antibiotics thanks to chronic strep/ear infections, so my microbiome is already shot.

soystud said...
" Misinformation is the most fatal thing in the world."


mmm, pretty sure falling on your pitchfork in the middle of the sahara desert might trump that !

You paint an interesting picture.

I would have preferred that scenario to having my knees, arms and achilles heel being busted and not being able to do all the activities I enjoyed prior to the antibiotics.

Like everything it is a double edged sword. We can't just get rid of antibiotics, they are way too important for us. But, we can certainly be much better on when and how to use them.

Guardian7 said...
I don't think anyone is implying the abolition of antibiotics, certainly not Blaser. Misrepresenting his position on antibiotics makes it a straw-man argument. If history serves us correctly, they've saved millions of lives. We've just taken something and abused it to the point where it's dismantling people's immune systems and doing permanent damage.

Yes - I abused them, demanded 3 rounds of different ones to 'make me better' so I could go back to work.

After that I had a mysterious illness that would come and go worse each time until I felt I was dying and the GP sent me to GI who discovered it was PAN-UC via the scope.

If you get flesh eating virus or sepsis you will need all the antibiotics you can get to safe life and limb(s).

Outside of that I am avoiding them.

[quote=Sibby I'll avoid them like the plague. Unless it's bacterial, I won't touch them. Yes, they probably gave me UC, but if my life is in danger, I'll take them ]


Me too!


How do you do that little box quote thingy!