Restoring Microbes and Restricting Antibiotics

A friend of mine is celebrating a health victory of sorts—several glorious infection-free months.
Julie contracted leptospirosis—caused by the bacterium Leptospira—while cleaning her backyard bird bath. She’s struggled with persistent infections requiring various antibiotics ever since. She even spent two long stints in the hospital.
Despite a multitude of tests, procedures, and specialists, no one seemed to know why she kept getting infections. Recently she was prescribed a daily prophylactic antibiotic. That is, indefinite use of antibiotics that the doctor hopes will prevent further infections.
However, Julie’s not sure whether to celebrate or be frustrated by a lifestyle of nonstop antibiotics. “I don’t feel like anybody’s listening,” she told me recently. “I’m asking whether I should be concerned that I’m setting myself up for a superbug infection.”
Julie’s right to be worried. Experts are increasingly sounding the alarm that antimicrobial overuse is driving the global superbug crisis, according to Epoch Times writer Mary West.
“When antibiotics were first marketed, they were a game-changer in treating infectious disease, saving countless lives. Yet, over time, bacterial strains have increasingly mutated, so they are no longer susceptible to the drugs’ eradicating effects,” West writes.
The study supports existing evidence of how antibiotics are linked to chronic diseases, such as inflammatory bowel disease, according to Dr. Robynne Chutkan, a gastroenterologist and author of “The Anti-Viral Gut.”
Despite decades of evidence, Chutkan said doctors and patients “still have very poor antibiotic stewardship.” Antibiotics are still frequently prescribed for viral infections, a problem that was exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Antibiotics have no effect on viruses.
Among those most at risk of antibiotic-resistant infections are those who frequently use antibiotics, such as my friend Julie.
The Lancet study and other research point out that new antibiotic development isn’t keeping pace with the need, and it could lead to disaster.
However, there are other potential solutions that could prevent disease, disability, and deaths associated with the overuse of antibiotics.
“Yes, sometimes antibiotics are lifesaving. But what the medical community isn’t doing is thinking about restoring the missing microbes,” Cheryl Sew Hoy said.
Sew Hoy is the founder of Tiny Health, a new company that helps pregnant women and moms with young babies determine if they are missing key microbes—or harboring too many of one species—then adjusting them to prevent problems before they begin.
What can be done if antibiotics only make for more dangerous infections? Doctors should consider all the really good bacteria being removed by antibiotics and how this could affect someone who is then later exposed to more pathogens, according to Sew Hoy.
Such research marks a promising new age—and puts “the right microbes to work to achieve beneficial effects,” according to Dr. William Davis, cardiologist and author of “Super Gut: A 4-Week Plan to Reprogram Your Microbiome, Restore Health, and Lose Weight.”