Antibiotics have long been credited with saving lives since the discovery of penicillin in 1928 by Sir Alexander Fleming. Many medical experts credit antibiotics with revolutionizing medicine, ridding infectious disease and extending longevity in the industrialized world. And while some of this might be true, antibiotics don’t come without their very real risks that are often overlooked, or even completely unknown. Below I am going to focus on some very reliable, common and inexpensive natural treatments for you to consider that might likely already have a place in your household or garden.
People are spending billions of dollars each year on medications for cold and flu symptoms and flu vaccines, yet still catching the cold, flu or even worse…due to the side effects of these toxic foreign substances in our bodies. In recent decades we have been accustomed to taking antibiotics for almost anything including cold and flu even though there is evidence against their ability to even fight these viruses to begin with.
The NY Times reported in in 2012:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/02/health/02patient.html
“So people will pop pills even when there is little or no proof they work. Americans spent about $3.6 billion on over-the-counter cold, cough and throat remedies in 2009, according to projections from Mintel International, a market research firm, about 1.7 percent more than in 2008. In addition, cold and flu sufferers will spend millions of dollars on prescription antibiotics that have no effect on viral infections.”
In recent years we’ve been hearing about MRSA and other “antibiotic resistant superbugs.” And according to the Center for Disease Control, “at least 2 million people become infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria and more than 23,000 people die annually as a consequence of these infections.8” That’s a lot of deaths from a medicine that has been so widely trusted for almost a century!
If you read my comprehensive expose, AntiDepressants, Vaccines and Autoimmune Disease – Hidden Causes of Diabetes which also include a section on statins and antibiotics, you already know a couple of the risks associated with them to be compromised immune system due to deterioration of bacteria necessary for a healthy gut and diabetes. In this article I want to bring to light some alternative methods that I have been using that have always worked for me with infections such as tetanus, west nile virus, gangrene, pneumonia and more.
THIS IS NOT TO BE CONSIDERED MEDICAL ADVICE! CHECK WITH YOUR HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONAL BEFORE STARTING ANY ALTERNATIVE TREATMENT!
As a health coach, I am often asked for advice on what someone can take to “get rid of” whatever their ailment is. And as a responsible health coach, I hesitate writing articles with herbal advice due to the fact that if you are taking a prescription drug, the results of combining the two can often lead to even more serious complications as many of them are actually designed to interact with them! The truth is when it comes to health, we should be asking ourselves , NOT what we can take, but what we can TAKE AWAY!!! Disease doesn’t just happen. You are doing something to contribute to it. When I work with people, I try to help them find out what they are doing that’s causing the symptoms that needs to be stopped. So when people ask me on facebook, “what can I tell my friend about curing her heart disease?” If I mention garlic or grapefruit and she happens to be on a statin, that could have dire results!!! So again, I caution you, if you are under the care of a physician, DO NOT EVEN CONSIDER TAKING ANY ADVICE MENTIONED HERE UNTIL YOU ARE CLEARED BY YOUR DOCTOR!!!
Back to the point of this article, I am simply sharing with you what I have found in my research and have trusted enough to use on myself since 2008 with proven results. For those who don’t know, I was in a wheelchair then. I was also told I would never walk again and my only hope would be daily medication to “manage my illness.” A personal crisis is technically what saved my life, because without it, I still may be under a doctors care or dead by now, according to the statistics of the diseases I was diagnosed with.
I know the feeling when you are diagnosed with a chronic illness. I also know what it feels like when you are a single parent trying to raise your children alone with a chronic disease just trying to make it day to day. And more painfully, I know what it feels like to lose that job that provided the income and insurance you thought you needed to provide for your family. I’m not gonna lie and say it was an easy transition, but I do want to show you how something that appears so bleak can actually be the catalyst to spring forth a new life! At least that’s how it worked in my case and I sincerely wish this transformative revelation upon everyone!!!
In 2007, after finding myself in a situation of not having an income or insurance to take care of myself, I had no choice but to reduce expenses and find new ways to deal with things so we could still eat…this is where I started to learn plant medicine, real nutrition, gardening, essential oils and herbs. I fully admit I was terrified. I knew that what they were doing to help me certainly wasn’t working, as I only became sicker the more health care I had. But that doesn’t mean I knew exactly what the solution was either. Losing my insurance empowered me to find another way. The Universe just put people in my life like Nurse Olivia, who used to do shows on natural healing with us on TruthBrigade Radio, that would give me the clues and self confidence I needed to give it a go. After all, there was no other option. Save myself or don’t. Either way, whatever I could do for myself couldn’t possibly be worse than the effects of where I put my trust the previous 3 decades.
Nature was the provider of all things up until the last century…we ate real foods, drank clean water, lived off the land and worked in harmony with Her and Her Medicine. However in the last century, we seem to have forgotten that we evolved from 2 alleged people, Adam and Eve to 7 Billion people today, without all the modern conveniences we’ve become accustomed to and dependent upon in the last century??? I would like to focus on a few of my favorite antibiotics that have stood the test of time throughout many cultures throughout our evolution.
GARLIC
As I shared in a blog 10 years ago in a recipe of my favorite antibiotic learned by my grandmother, lemon, garlic and oregano were the focus of this medicinal dish, known as chicken soup. 🙂 So I think I should start with garlic and some scientific research we may not know about due to the media propaganda claiming there is no evidence that natural foods and herbs can work. But if that was actually true, why is it written about favorable at the National Library of Medicine?
Some keys points in the report:
- “Ancient Chinese and Indian medicine recommended garlic to aid respiration and digestion and to treat leprosy and parasitic infestation (Rivlrn, 1998 ▶).”
- “Garlic has also played as an important medicine to Sumerian and the ancient Egyptians. There is some evidence that during the earliest Olympics in Greece, garlic was fed to the athletes for increasing stamina (Lawson and Bauer, 1998 ▶).”
- “Avicenna (1988) ▶, in his well-known book, Al Qanoon Fil Tib (The Canon of Medicine), recommended garlic as a useful compound in treatment of arthritis, toothache, chronic cough, constipation, parasitic infestation, snake and insect bites, gynecologic diseases, as well as in infectious diseases (as antibiotic).”
- “Several experimental and clinical investigations suggest many favorable effects of garlic and its preparations. These effects have been largely attributed to i) reduction of risk factors for cardiovascular diseases, ii) reduction of cancer risk, iii) antioxidant effect, iv) antimicrobial effect, and v) enhancement of detoxification foreign compound and hepatoprotection (Colín-González, 2012 ▶; Aviello, 2009 ▶).”
I encourage you to read the entire report and other research papers, but I will summarize some of the benefits. It is well known for it’s benefits on diabetes, cardiovascular, liver disease and candida. Some of the known properties are;
- anti-tumor
- anti-cancer
- antimicrobial
- anti-protozoal
- anti-parasitic
- antigiardial
- antifungal
- antiviral
As you can see there is in fact much evidence that garlic is not only a well known antibiotic, but has many other medicinal properties as well!
It is in fact well known in the medical and scientific community that herbs DO IN FACT PLAY A POSITIVE ROLE IN PREVENTION AND TREATMENT OF DISEASE! So don’t end your research with garlic! They studied many herbs including cinnamon, clove, cumin, oregano and thyme in this study.
“Many spices—such as clove, oregano, thyme, cinnamon, and cumin—possessed significant antibacterial and antifungal activities against food spoilage bacteria like Bacillus subtilis and Pseudomonas fluorescens, pathogens like Staphylococcus aureus and Vibrio parahaemolyticus, harmful fungi like Aspergillus flavus, even antibiotic resistant microorganisms such as methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Therefore, spices have a great potential to be developed as new and safe antimicrobial agents. This review summarizes scientific studies on the antibacterial and antifungal activities of several spices and their derivatives.”
Some of my favorite ways to consume garlic is through my homemade garden fresh salsa, fresh pesto, hummus and this personal twist on a traditional Indian dish.
OREGANO AND THYME
I am including thyme and oregano together since many of the research articles were conducted on both oils in their potential role in healing infections and wounds, therefore I would only be repeating the same research twice if I separated them. Also, remember when I cured Ricky’s gangrene? Both Oregano and Thyme were in my blend. 🙂
I brought up some of the medicinal properties of oregano in my old blog about healing with chicken soup and discuss it in many of my health shows and videos, but the truth is, people don’t care about actual personal experience, they want to see it on paper that it is safe or effective!
Fair enough. You want paper, I will give you your paper! 🙂
In this study on oregano and thyme essential oils we see that, “T. daenensis and O. vulgare EOs have strong antimicrobial and anti-efflux pump activity against clinical isolates of S. pneumoniae and might be useful in controlling pneumococcal infections. SIGNIFICANCE AND IMPACT OF THE STUDY: This study introduced Thymus daenensis and Origanum vulgare essential oil as new antibacterial and anti-efflux pump agents against fluoroquinolone-resistant Streptococcus pneumoniae clinical isolates.”
In this study about Antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus strains of swine origin , scientists conclude, “Natural antimicrobials extracted from oregano have an inhibitory activity against S. aureus strains from swine origin,”
Check out this Brazlian study that evaluated the efficacy of oregano, thyme and other essential oils such as basil, rosemary and peppermint on their affects against antibiotic resistant food born illness;
The evidence is clear, not only in my own personal experience, but even in science! So why is it that doctors and media will caution you against using herbs and oils as medicine? And why is it that when you tell people how easy it is to cure their infections, their eyes glaze over and say things like, they need to “do their research” before they can trust a plant? Isn’t that ironic considering they don’t research any of the drugs they are offered, yet take issue with natural medicine…? In this 2018 study, researchers evaluated 247 essential oil combinations against the reference strains of wound pathogens. See report here, Wound Pathogens: Investigating Antimicrobial Activity of Commercial Essential Oil Combinations and concluded again that many of the oils studied offered “antimicrobial activity against all five reference strains studies and several displayed synergy against more than one pathogen!”
I will leave you with one more study on thyme before I move on to some of my other favorites. This one claims, “Strong antiseptic activity of essential oils has been known for a long time….” and that oregano “exhibited extremely strong activity against all of the clinical strains of Staphylococcus, Enterococcus, Escherichia and Pseudomonas genera.”
Well, again, if they’ve known for a “long time,” why do doctors and media try to make you think they have not studied these medicinal herbs and oils??? See for yourself!
FRANKINCENSE AND MYRRH
Again I am including these together for a couple reasons. The first being that many of the studies of these oils were looked at together, and because I use them together often myself due to their synergistic properties. Synergism makes them more powerful together than alone. I also appreciate their stimulating effect on the pineal gland. In fact in this study, researchers looked at exactly that, the synergistic effects of these oils working together, The additive and synergistic antimicrobial effects of select frankincense and myrrh oils–a combination from the pharaonic pharmacopoeia. And this is what they have to say about that, “This study validates the enhanced efficacy when used in combination against a selection of pathogens.“
And in this study at the University in Belgrade, Frankincense and myrrh essential oils and burn incense fume against micro-inhabitants of sacral ambients. Wisdom of the ancients? they found that burning myrrh and frankincense incense reduced airborne bacterial counts by 68%!!! So incense is not just some hippy dippy trend!!! Nope, not just for “hippies” and “bible thumpers!”
And more research at Healthline.com reveal even more benefits of these magical substances from nature;
Also, preliminary animal research suggests that myrrh can directly kill bacteria, as well as stimulate the immune system to make more white blood cells, which also kill bacteria (7).
In test-tube studies, myrrh oil has strong effects against several infectious bacteria, including some drug-resistant ones (3, 8, 9, 10).
In one test-tube study, myrrh oil at a low dilution of 0.1% killed all dormant Lyme disease bacteria, which can persist in some people after antibiotic treatment and continue to cause illness (11Trusted Source).
Still, more studies are needed to determine whether myrrh oil can treat persistent Lyme infections.
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/myrrh-oil#section1
Here’s one last study I want to share with you on Frankincense and Myrrh that concludes with, “The antimicrobial properties of essential oil derived from frankincense, a compound with well-known traditional use, showed that it possesses a clear potential as a natural antimicrobial agent. Moreover, the results suggest possible application of B. carteri EO vapour and incense fume as occasional air purifiers in sacral ambients, apart from daily church rituals.”
GINGER
I want to talk about this common root that I believe should be in every household and I add to every batch of juice I make! 🙂 I also use it for my favorite medicinal tea blend. I believe these nutritional rituals I practice have not only helped me heal from many so called incurable diseases, but also prevents me from coming down with a cold, flu and allergies like most of the rest of the population. This article at MedicalNewsToday.com goes over many of the medicinal benefits of ginger as well as it’s nutritional facts.
In a study conducted by the National Center for Food Safety and Technology, Illinois Institute of Technology where they compare the antimicrobial activity of garlic, ginger, carrot, and turmeric pastes against Escherichia coli they prove that “Commercial ginger paste and fresh garlic paste showed the strongest antimicrobial activity with complete inactivation of E. coli.”
But ginger isn’t only beneficial for colds, flu and e. coli!!! I have been using it for years to help manage my pain! And it appears it’s benefits are not all in my head. 🙂 In a 2015 study in partnership with OsteoArthritis Society International evaluating the efficacy and safety of ginger in osteoarthritis patients they find that ginger is effective in reducing pain and inflammation associated with osteoarthritis and other inflammatory diseases.
“Based on the empirical evidence, our data supports that oral ginger is able to reduce pain and disability in OA46. Our confidence in the clinical benefit and the optimal therapeutic dose is though moderate based on a double downgrading for Risk of Bias (i.e., serious limitations in the applicable ITT population estimates), and a subsequent upgrading due to the apparent dose–response relationship49.”
How I eat my ginger and how I drink my ginger! Other healthy recipes here.
ECHINACEA
Another favorite of mine is echinacea, due to it’s wide availability in almost every yard I see in warm months. It has been studied extensively for it’s use in treating the common cold, flu and it’s effects on the immune system. As you can see there are many reports to go through on pubmed.gov right now about it’s healing abilities, over 1200 to be exact.
In examining this 2016 study by The College of Nursing and Health Professions, Drexel University that studied Echinacea’s potential role in cold prevention titled Echinacea purpurea: A Proprietary Extract of Echinacea purpurea Is Shown to be Safe and Effective in the Prevention of the Common Cold, they determined;
“This study showed that Echinacea’s long-term prevention was associated with a reduction in the total number of cold episodes, a reduction in the number of days with colds, and a reduction in cold episodes requiring additional medication. Furthermore, the Echinacea test agent inhibited virally confirmed colds, exhibited maximal effects on recurrent infections, and demonstrated that its preventive effects increased relative to therapy compliance and adherence to the protocol. In summary, Echinacea purpurea when taken as recommended for the prevention of the common cold appears to provide a positive risk to benefit ratio.”
So what’s preventing you from going outside and picking some echinacea??? Why is it that so many Americans are afraid of free food and medicine?
The great thing about Nature is that there are many choices of herbs and natural medicines you can use for similar desired healing effects, of which there are too numerous to mention, but I will share with you a few more herbs and oils you can look in to for further research if you are not satisfied with the herbs I chose to showcase today. 🙂 I am providing clickable links to pubmed.gov to make your studies easier.
- Raw Local Honey
- Clove
- GoldenSeal
- Grapefruit Seed Oil
- Cayenne
- Olive Leaf Extract
- Turmeric
- Cabbage
- Cinnamon
- Coconut Oil
- Apple Cider Vinegar
- Pau d’arco
- Colloidal Silver
I hope this has helped you make a more informed decision when it comes to choosing antibiotics. One obvious issue with them is that “anti” means against and “bio” means life. When you put it together it appears, antibiotics mean anti-life, which we all know has been associated with diminished digestive health due to the death of all bacteria with traditional pharma made antibiotics, which leads to other diseases like diabetes, which of course leads to even more disease!
I wish you all the best in your search for better health! I would also like to leave you with a few playlists on youtube with more information about essential oils, getting started with them and practical methods of application, as well as a general health and wellness playlist you can refer to at any time. I know this is a bold statement, but I can promise you that if you actually listened to every single one of these videos, you will be empowered enough to take care of yourself and your family and not have to rely on western medicine again. However, I can’t caution you enough;
DO NOT ATTEMPT ANY OF THESE METHODS WITHOUT CONSULTING YOUR DOCTOR IF YOU ARE IN TREATMENT FOR ANY CONDITION!
Thank you for choosing to spend your time here in deciding what’s best for your health! If you do choose to make your own antibiotics I go over a method in this video.
And if you would like to try one of my creations, Bug Be Gone has been effective for all my basic antibiotic needs. I also have Immune Revive and Hikers Peak Oil that expand a bit further in their capabilities. Check the product listing for all ingredients and links from pubmed.gov sharing about their properties. Each of these products can be taken internally or externally for wounds, skin issues, rashes, parasites, fungus and more. Hikers Peak Oil is the one that healed Ricky’s Gangrene. You can either put them in a capsule or take a few drops under the tongue.
Happy Healing!
Blessings and Love,
Christie Aphrodite
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