Killer diarrhea bug can be stopped by doing this one thing
Researchers in the UK have confirmed one of the biggest discoveries to date on how to stop the horrific gut infection called C. diff.
C. diff can be a killer. And even for those whose lives aren’t in immediate jeopardy, this nasty, painful illness — which can cause watery, bloody diarrhea as many as 30 times a day — can be almost impossible to shake.
But the information that two British universities, along with Public Health England, just published in The Lancet should be required reading for every single hospital in the U.S.
The beauty of what they found, however, is that you can implement it all on your own starting now.
While any strain of C. diff is bad news, it seems the bug is producing more virulent varieties every year.
The pathogen does its dirty deed by producing toxins that destroy the mucosal lining of the gut. And some of the newly discovered strains can product multiple toxins, making people even sicker than ever before.
The CDC recently reported that every year in the U.S., around half a million people are infected with C. diff. Of those, close to 30,000 die during the first month — with most of the fatalities being people 65 and older. The agency calls it “deadly diarrhea.”
So, when hospitals in the UK managed to nip their C. diff infections in the bud by 80 percent, you would think the eyes and the ears of the world would have been on them to find out what they did.
But while U.S. officials didn’t appear very interested, thank goodness researchers at two universities — Oxford and Leeds — as well as a UK agency similar to the CDC jumped in to find out what they were doing.
While the hospitals were using a practice called “deep cleaning” to try and stem the epidemic of C. diff, they also did something else. Something so amazingly simple and logical that it was like saying eureka — one and one makes two!
It came as no surprise that it was the overuse of antibiotics — specifically those in the fluoroquinolone family (called FQs) — that was behind it, rather than hospitals not being clean enough.
Because these FQs have been used so haphazardly for so long, many strains of C.diff are now resistant to them (the most commonly prescribed ones being Cipro, Levaquin and Avelox).
This means if you’re infected with a resistant strain and then take one of those antibiotics, it will only succeed in killing the nonresistant gut bugs, leaving the door wide open for those untouched C. diff pathogens to survive and thrive. It’s actually a way of giving these deadly diarrhea bugs a helping hand in taking over.
While prescribing fewer antibiotics is being widely discussed and (hopefully) implemented to try and stop superbugs in general, this is the first time it was shown that restricting the use of this particular class of antibiotics was proven to stop the “vast majority” of C. diff cases.
While you might think that your doctor would never prescribe an antibiotic unless it’s really needed, sadly, that’s often not the case. Most doctors give them out like Halloween candy, putting their hand in the Big Pharma Jack-O-Lantern and pulling out an Rx!
But common colds, routine bronchitis, most sore throats and sinus infections, to name the top culprits, don’t need any antibiotics in the first place.
So if your doctor is fast on the draw in handing out prescriptions for them, stop and ask him if the next one he gives you is really necessary. Especially if it’s one in the FQ family.
Considering what’s been discovered across the pond about C. diff, that simple act could save you a lot of pain and suffering.
It could even save your life.
“Curbing antibiotics tied to Britain’s drop in C. Diff” Alexandria Bachert, January 24, 2017, Medpage Today, medpagetoday.com
