How you can easily protect yourself from deadly infections

Big and bad

If you go to a hospital for treatment or to visit someone, take this warning very seriously: Wash your hands.

More to the point: If you want to reduce your risk of “superbug” infection and improve your chances of post-hospital-visit survival…wash your hands!

The invader within

Clostridium difficile–better known as C. diff–is like a Trojan Horse living in your gut. It’s down there right now. And for most of us, most of the time, it’s under control, held in check by good bacteria.

But when it finds an opening, it can trigger digestive inflammation and diarrhea so severe that some cases result in death.

And here’s where it gets really scary: One of the things that opens the way for a C. diff infection is exactly what should control it: antibiotic therapy.

When a potent antibiotic is used to control an infection, both good and bad bacteria are killed off. But C. diff is a hardy survivor. If a sufficient amount remains after a round of antibiotic treatment, the good bacteria are not there in great enough numbers to keep it in check.

This is one of the reasons C. diff infection shows up in hospitals so frequently. Another reason (and I hope you’re not eating right now): C. diff is spread via feces spores that can live for weeks on end–long after an infected patient has left the hospital. Touch the wrong doorknob, then scratch your upper lip and…well, you can imagine what follows.

What’s worse–the C. diff problem is escalating.

New research from Duke University Medical Center collected two years of bacterial infection data from nearly 30 hospitals. The rate of C. diff infection was a full 25 percent higher than infection with MRSA, the notoriously deadly bacterium that kills more than 20,000 U.S. patients each year.

Duke researcher Becky Miller, M.D., told Ivanhoe Newswire that MRSA is regarded as the “big, bad superbug.” And she added, “Based on our data, we can see that this thinking, along with prevention methods, will need to change.”

Maybe I can help with that, Dr. Miller.

First, patients need to be aware that regular use of these three very popular types of drugs have been shown to increase C. diff infection risk:

• Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs)
• H2 receptor antagonists (such as Zantac and Pepcid) to treat heartburn
• Proton pump inhibitor drugs (such as Prevacid and Prilosec) to treat heartburn

The PPI drugs in particular sharply increase risk. They reduce gastric acid, of course, but that same acid helps control C. diff.

Secondly, doctors, patients, and caregivers all need to be aware that people in their 60s and 70s are at greatest risk of developing C. diff infection during a hospital stay.

And finally, antibiotic therapy wipes out good bacteria along with the bad. But the good can be restored with a probiotic supplement or probiotic-rich food.

For instance, many yogurt products contain a couple of strains of good bacteria, but you’d need to eat multiple servings to get the assistance your gut needs when it’s under duress with antibiotic treatment.

NorthStar Nutritionals, an affiliate of ours, makes an excellent supplement called Healthy Gut that contains six different strains of good bacteria and more than 20 billion active cultures in every dose.

You can find out more about Healthy Gut at this link.

And one more thing: After you’ve been out in public–the hospital, the mall, anywhere there are people–give your hands a thorough washing. But don’t rely on alcohol-based hand sanitizers. They’re not strong enough to completely wipe out C. diff spores.

Sources:
“Hospitals preparing for killer bug” AsiaOne, 12/2/10, health.asiaone.com
“Superbug On the Rise” Ivanhoe Newswire, 3/23/10, ivanhoe.com