Welcome to Dr. David Eifrig's Health & Wealth Bulletin.
This is Weekly Update.
This week, we're coming to you with the scariest topic we've ever discussed: Superbugs.
These are bacteria that are resistant to several types of antibiotics.
That makes them very difficult to treat, and in many cases, can make them deadly.
We want to start by telling you about a woman in Nevada who, at the end of 2016, died from
a bacteria called Klebsiella pneumoniae.
The reason this is so scary is because this strain of bacteria was actually resistant
to all 26 known antibiotics.
That's something we haven't seen before, but unfortunately we are probably going to
see again.
That's why today, we want to talk about how superbugs are made and what we can do
to help protect ourselves at the individual level.
So the superbug you're most likely familiar with is C. diff.
That's because it's usually found in hospitals and even in some retirement homes.
It's responsible for about half a million infections each year and 29,000 deaths.
In addition to that, superbugs also account for about 2 million other infections and 23,000
deaths in the U.S.
Although, keep in mind, these numbers are from 2011, and they have increased over time.
In fact, a report from Britain showed that the world wide death rate from superbugs is
about 700,000 every year.
Now, the reason that we're talking about this today is because the worldwide use of
antibiotics is skyrocketing.
We just saw a report that it's up 65% and that's a huge increase, especially in countries
like India and China.
But even here in the U.S. even though we know the problems with overusing antibiotics, we
still have not reduced how many we use.
Now the creation of superbugs is deceptively.
The problem is that every time you expose the bacteria to a certain chemical, like an
antibiotic, a few of those bacteria will survive.
That's because of random mutations and things like that.
However, if you keep exposing them to the same chemical, more and more of them are more
likely to survive.
It's part of their evolutionary benefit to keep staying alive every time you try to
kill them.
That's why, if you're exposed to an antibiotic a lot, for instance if you take it often enough
throughout your life and you take a lot of different classes of antibiotics, you're
more likely to have problems with these types of antibiotic resistant bacteria.
Now one of the biggest problems here is overprescription.
In fact, in 2015 there was an article out of the Journal of the American Medical Association
that found about 55 to 80% of all patients with acute bronchitis were prescribed antibiotics.
Now, that sounds like a high number and it should because almost all cases of acute bronchitis
are caused by viruses.
The problem here is that viruses cannot be killed by antibiotics.
Antibiotics only fight bacteria.
So you're literally taking antibiotics when you don't need them.
The problem is, if you do have any bacteria in your body, they're going to start getting
antibacterial resistance.
So now we want to talk about five tips that you can take to help keep you safe from antibiotic
resistant bacteria.
Now the first three involve your doctor.
The first one is to find out if you have a bacterial or a viral infection.
So the next time you go to your doctor and you're sick, ask the specifically to test
to see if you have a bacterial infection.
If you do, that's when you should be taking antibiotics.
That's because, should you have a viral infection, like the flu virus, it's not
going to respond to antibiotics and you're only setting yourself up for antibiotic resistant
bacteria.
The second tip is to try a delayed prescription.
Now a lot of times, our bodies will recover naturally if we have a bacterial infection.
That's why we recommend waiting and seeing if you really get worse.
If you do go to the doctor and you're not quite sure if it'll go away on its own,
ask them for a delayed prescription.
What this means is that they'll write you a prescription for an antibiotic, but it'll
be dated a few days after your appointment.
And that way, if you do still need it, you can go ahead and get it filled.
The third tactic is if you should get a prescription for antibiotics, make sure you take the entire
course of medication.
You want to make sure that you wipe out all the bacteria.
If you have an eight day prescription, for instance, and you only take four days of it,
there's still a chance some of the bacteria are hanging around and they're now building
that resistance to the drug.
Our fourth tip involves the hospital setting.
If you're at a hospital, you want to see if they have a stewardship program in place.
What this does is it keeps tabs on any prescription for antibiotics written by a doctor.
It's usually monitored by a third party, like an infectious disease doctor or even
a pharmacist who can evaluate the situation and make sure there's no overprescription
going on.
And our fifth tip is one that we've talked about a lot before.
It's the simple act of washing your hands with plain soap and water.
That's all you really need to kill all of the bad bacteria that you might have on you,
without the added problem of triclosan, which is the agent in antibacterial soaps.
We've warned you about triclosan before because of the problems it causes with our
hormones.
It's a hormone interruptor.
We also don't like triclosan because it's a direct contributor to the growth of superbugs.
We hope these five tips will help keep you safe from antibiotic resistant bacteria.
But I know what you might be thinking – is there really any hope for protecting ourselves
if there are already bugs out there that are resistant to all known antibiotics.
Well, there is some new hope on the horizon.
In 2017, there was a big breakthrough in the antibiotic drug market, with a drug called
teixobactin.
The reason we're excited about this is because it's the first class of antibiotic discovered
in about 25 to 30 years.
That's really great news and we're really excited to see how it will perform in the
coming months.
We're going to keep you updated on this story and in the meantime, please keep following
our five tips and keep you and your loved ones safe.
That's it for today.
Don't forget to keep your comments and questions coming to our feedback line.
Like, share, and subscribe.
And we'll see you next week.
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