Why I Stopped Taking Antibiotics

As the natural health movement grows, people across the nation and the world are learning the benefits of using food, herbs, and supplements to prevent and treat illness and disease.

Antibiotics are chemical therapy. Read any package insert or look up a pharmaceutical on the Internet and thoroughly read the possible side effects. Many drugs, even many over the counter drugs, warn of risks that include lifelong disability or death. These are the outcomes the companies either freely admit or are forced to admit.

Why I Stopped Taking Antibiotics

I didn’t realize throughout the years I followed conventional medicine that antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals were damaging my gut and my immune system – not until I crashed headlong into auto-immune disease after my second anaphylactic reaction, a reaction to an antibiotic.

The next time I became ill, I took supplements. One day my chiropractor did a kinesthetic test and told me I had strep throat. He recommended a supplement: Spanish Black Radish.

I decided to follow his treatment plan, but I wanted to prove to myself and to my medical doctor that this form of therapy worked. I asked her to give me a step test and yes, it was positive. She immediately argued with the plan, saying strep was too serious for alternative treatment. I brought her around by promising I would do a follow-up test and then take antibiotics if needed. A week later, the test was negative.

Another month passed, and I developed pneumonia. I went straight to my doctor. Pneumonia always scared me since it had nearly killed me twice, and I wanted the “big guns.” This was the day that changed my life. My doctor, my brilliant, conventional, medical doctor suggested I go back to my chiropractor and ask what supplements to use for the pneumonia since his treatment had worked so well for the strep. She was right. It worked great. That was 20 years ago. I have never taken another antibiotic.

Our Immune System Without Antibiotics

The amazing differences people discover when they stop taking antibiotics are how they recover from illnesses faster, how illnesses are less severe, and how they don’t become ill as often as they did back in the day they took antibiotics. All of these changes are signs of a healthier immune system. In time, you stop becoming sick. Your immune system works so well it defeats attacking pathogens before they can get a foothold and cause you to feel ill.

I believe several things are at play here. First of all, it would be unlikely for anyone to follow alternative medicine without also learning that food is our primary medicine. Better nutrition and alternative medicine go hand in hand. But as soon as you stop taking antibiotics, you stop the utter destruction of the good bacteria in your gut. And your gut is responsible for 80% of your immune system! So of course you are going to respond better to pathogens than you did before your gut was healing.

If you are making the switch from conventional medicine to alternative medicine, start with diet. The healthiest diet is a plant-based diet where 80% of the food you eat is fresh, raw, organic produce, more vegetables than fruits (see the first source for an awesome recipe). If you choose to eat meat, make sure it is organic, and do not overcook the meat or cook at a high temperature. Avoid pasteurized and/or homogenized dairy, all artificial flavors colors, and preservatives, MSG, GMOs, and trans fats. Limit or eliminate gluten, sugar, and caffeine. This is a diet filled with real, whole foods, not processed garbage devoid of nutrition.

With this kind of diet you will soon find that your immune system fights much better on its own than it ever has before. But when it needs help, choose high-quality supplements proven to aid the immune system, not tear it down. For those who have taken antibiotics and have not addressed their gut health yet, see After taking antibiotics, this is what you need to do and Balance Your Inner Ecosystem.

Recommended Supplements:

Why I Stopped Taking Prescription Drugs

My mother was the first in our family to question conventional medicine. When I was a four, I was diagnosed with severe ADHD and learning disabilities. While the doctor insisted that Ritalin was the only viable treatment and was urgently needed, my mom researched alternative treatments and successfully managed my symptoms through diet alone. Unfortunately, she did not learn about alternative treatments for the asthma, bronchitis, sinus infections, and ear infections that plagued her, my brother, and me for many years. Removing dairy from our diet helped, but each of us still took antibiotics four or five times a year for many years.

Our slow change from conventional medical treatment to alternative medicine was made through a combination of excellent care from a chiropractor who practiced Contact Reflex Analysis with supplementation and my mother’s health crisis. After so many years of antibiotic treatments, she developed chronic autoimmune disease and refused the only treatment offered—steroids. Due to our chiropractor, she had learned enough about supplements to know that they could treat the cause, not just the symptoms. And since my aunt suffered from lupus, my mother had seen, firsthand, the damage done by conventional treatment.

After my mother (with the help of our chiropractor) treated both strep throat and pneumonia with supplements, healing faster than she ever had with antibiotics, she was determined the she and her children would never use antibiotics again unless an illness was life threatening and there was no alternative.

The last time I took antibiotics

Our immune systems slowly healed. Within a few years, serious yearly respiratory infections were a thing of the past. When I caught a cold, it was just a cold. It didn’t develop into asthmatic bronchitis or pneumonia anymore. And then, I no longer caught colds. But one day I came down with a nasty case of impetigo—a staph infection with pus filled sores erupting all over my body. Yes, it was gross. Squeeze on of those suckers and pus squirted all over the place.

When my mom found out about it, she panicked. She figured that I had staph in my blood and this infection was her exception to the rule of no antibiotics. Sepsis can kill. She didn’t even consider treating it with supplements. She took me straight to the emergency room for IV antibiotics.

For some reason, the doctor refused to treat me with IV antibiotics, simply prescribing oral medication. I promptly had an allergic reaction to the medication, so it’s a good thing I didn’t get that IV. I immediately stopped taking the antibiotics and visited the chiropractor. The right supplement cleared it up very quickly. It’s been seventeen years since that day, and I have never taken another antibiotic. Neither has my mom.

My immune system is incredibly healthy due to my diet and lifestyle. I don’t get sick. I now know how antibiotics destroy the bacteria in the gut—the very bacteria that comprises 80% of our immune system. At the same time it disrupts the balance of good bacteria to bad bacteria and allows Candida to overgrow.

Antibiotics are chemotherapy. We tend to reserve that word for the worst, most destructive pharmaceuticals, but the reality is, all pharmaceuticals (including all antibiotics) are chemicals used for therapeutic purposes—chemical therapy. They are used to kill the invading pathogen. None of them are used to support and aid the immune system, to help it do its job. This is the primary difference between alternative and conventional medicine.

If your immune system has been compromised by antibiotics, checkout the first article below.

After Taking Antibiotics, This Is What You Need To Do To Restore Healthy Intestinal Flora

Antibiotics kill bacteria. The problem is, our bodies are filled with bacteria, and those microbes are essential to our health. Our gut is home to 300-1000 different species of bacteria that help us digest our food, create and synthesize vitamins, repel invading pathogens, create neurotransmitters, and more. Antibiotics are indiscriminate killers. They do not just target the one pathogen that is causing an infection in our body; they kill off the good bacteria in our gut as well.

If we take an antibiotic, especially a broad spectrum antibiotic, we need to replenish the good bacteria in our gut as quickly as possible. Not only do we need it to do its daily work, we need to maintain the delicate balance between bacteria and fungi. Candida is opportunistic. Given a chance, it will quickly mass-produce, wreaking havoc in the digestive tract and, in time, the entire body.

So what can you do to repopulate the good bacteria that antibiotics have destroyed?

First, you feed and house the good bacteria that remain in your colon and encourage them to multiply. They need prebiotics–raw, preferably organic, vegetables and fruits. Insoluble fiber provides food for good bacteria while giving it a structure upon which to multiply. Eat at least one big salad a day with a large variety of vegetables. Raw vegetables and fruits (more vegetables than fruits) should always comprise 80% of your diet. After antibiotics, following this 80% rule (with mostly vegetables) is essential to regain the proper bacterial balance in your gut.

Avoid all processed sugar. Processed sugar feeds Candida and “bad” bacteria (including the pathogen you are trying to destroy with the antibiotic). Processed foods, heavy starches, and chemicals (sugar substitutes other than stevia, artificial colors, flavorings, and preservatives) should be completely avoided. This includes the healthier variety of sugars such as agave, brown rice syrup, fruit juice, etc. They should be avoided while trying to rebuild healthy flora as well. This is the time to eat a perfect diet. Even varieties of fruit with higher sugar content should be limited at this time.

A Note About Probiotics

Probiotics are the next step to help you repopulate the gut with good bacteria. Probiotics are foods or supplements that contain beneficial bacteria. But note, probiotics are not all equal. Don’t eat flavored, sugar-filled, commercial yogurt. It will do more harm to your gut than good.

There is a problem with probiotics. Getting the good bacteria past the stomach acid and into the gut is not easy. Stomach acid kills off a lot of the probiotics we ingest in any form. So eat a lot of them.

Fermented vegetables like homemade sauerkraut and kimchi, kombucha, coconut kefir, and other fermented foods do deliver live beneficial bacteria into the gut along with nutrition and enzymes. Supplements also help, though you must choose high-quality probiotic supplements that are specifically formulated to get past the stomach acid. While a store-bought probiotic supplement has only a fraction of the beneficial bacteria that a good homemade sauerkraut has, the truly high-quality probiotic supplements have bacteria strands much more able to bypass the stomach acid.

If you do not have your appendix, it’s a good idea to supplement your diet daily with a quality probiotic.

The beneficial bacteria in fermented foods is weakened and killed by stomach acid. There are lots of benefits to fermented foods, but they don’t make for a therapeutically powerful probiotic.

Most probiotics are worthless. Two that work very well are Floramend, available at Green Lifestyle Market, and Bio-K , which can be found at most health food stores including Whole Foods. There are other probiotics that are good, too; these aren’t the only good ones, but I am very familiar with the quality of Bio-k and Floramend. I use them regularly, and 98% of the other products are a waste of money. Bio-K is great for anytime you need a probiotic right now, provided you can find it locally. If you can order online, FloraMend is much cheaper in the long run.

But remember, prebiotics are the most important. Eat right, load up on healthy greens and others veggies and fermented foods. Your body will thank you. It is also good to note that 80% of our immune system is contained within our gut, and those bacteria your antibiotic killed off are the foundation of that immune response. Feed them right and they will help you avoid getting sick in the future.

Here’s My 10-Day Routine to Balance My Gut Flora, Step by Step:

Days 1-5 – or as long as symptoms last:

80% of the diet should be raw produce, mostly vegetables.
Drink lots of cranberry lemonade (most should do a gallon) and eat a large salad every day (mine are 9-11 cup salads).
Meals should all be made at home, from scratch, with no overly refined, processed ingredients such fruit juice, white rice, or any sweetener (stevia is the exception).
Snack on produce.
Eat stir-frys with lots of veggies, brown rice, quinoa, soaked and sprouted beans (be careful, may need to wait a week on these), add a little Braggs amino acids (it’s essentially a healthy soy sauce), and lots of turmeric and garlic and ginger.
Shillington’s Intestinal Cleanse. Start with one a day. Build up as instructed. Take with meals.
Take 15 SF722 a day, 5 per meal.
Take 3 Undecyn, 1 each meal.
Take 2 FloraMend upon waking up and 2 FloraMend when before sleep. Don’t take these at the same time as the other supplements; they can weaken each other’s effect.

Days 6-15, or once symptoms are under control:

Take 3 Abzorb Vitamin & Nutrient Optimizer and 2 FloraMend with each meal.
Take 5 Olive leaf extract upon waking and before sleep at night.
Continue with the same diet.

Check out the lemonade and salad recipe in Detox Cheap and Easy Without Fasting – Recipes Included and see Gluten, Candida, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Autoimmune Diseases for an in-depth look at gut health.

Why I Stopped Taking Antibiotics