Once again, The World Health Organization (WHO) is warning all countries that antibiotic resistance has reached epidemic levels, but there is also good news. According to WHO experts, we know the reason that bacteria are no longer vulnerable to antibiotics. They say that overuse and misuse of antibiotics causes antibiotic resistance.
I believe that the problem is much deeper than just overprescribing antibiotics. Do you remember when we were children with crayons? What happened when you mixed the colors red and green together on a piece of paper? You got brown, right?
For a moment, pretend that bacteria are red, antibiotics are green, and fungi are brown.
As I taught a group of physicians last week in Florida, co-infections, where a patient goes to the doctor with two infections, (like bacteria and fungus) are quite common. In 2016, Dr. Vincent Bruno proved that when you mix Staph aureus bacteria (red) and Candida fungus (brown), green completely disappears! Indeed, Vancomycin (green) the drug of last resort used in Methicillin Resistant Staph Aureus (MRSA) infections no longer works! Why? It seems as though the presence of Candida mixed with the bacteria interferes with the strongest antibiotic curing the infection.
And so I believe it is with millions of patients going to doctor’s offices everyday. The doctor quickly diagnoses red, and prescribes green without every looking for brown! If brown is present, as it often is, the green won’t work to kill the red! Is this making sense? Let’s make this easier to understand.
If patients had a simple staph infection, most antibiotics would work, but they have a dual infection, say fungus and bacteria. For that reason, the antibiotics are useless, but the danger goes far beyond the antibiotic not working. Taking too many antibiotics is now linked to heart diseases and 5 common types of cancer. Since doctors are unaware of this, please always ask to be tested for fungus, as our CDC now says, before being quickly handed an antibiotic.