Herbal Antibiotics: Natural Alternatives for Treating Drug-Resistant Bacteria by Stephen Harrod Buhner Page B

antibiotic substances such as acidophilin, various organic acids, and peroxides that help prevent bacterial infections.
    In declaring war on bacteria we declared war on the underlying living structure of the planet, on all life-forms we can see, on ourselves.
    One to two pounds of our adult body weight comes from our coevolutionary bacteria. The bacteria that colonize us as infants have an ancient, coevolutionary relationship with human beings; they are an integral part of our species’ development and our body ecology. They are in fact our first line of defense against disease.
    The skin of our bodies and the mucosal systems of our sinus passages and intestinal tracts are to bacteria much like fresh fertile black soil is to plants. Plow up the soil, disturbing the plants that grow there, and even if you don’t plant anything, the soil will soon be covered with a profusion of new plant growth. The same thing occurs in our bodies if our bacterial ecology is disturbed, as it often is, by antibiotics.
Why We Need Bacteria
    The bacteria that colonize our bodies are friendly, mutualistic bacteria. They take up all the space on and in our bodies on which bacteria can grow. By so doing, they leave no room for other, less benign bacteria to live. But the relationship goes beyond this.
All
of our coevolutionary bacteria generate antibiotic substances that kill off other, less friendly bacteria. The
Streptococcus
bacteria that normally live in our throats produce large quantities of antibacterial substances that arespecifically active against the
Streptococcus pyogenes
bacteria that cause strep throat.
    Regular exposure to pathogenic bacteria as we are growing teaches our bodies and our symbiotic bacteria how to respond most effectively to disease organisms. This produces much higher levels of health in later life. Research continually finds that children who are “protected” from bacteria by keeping them in exceptionally clean environments where they are constantly exposed to antibacterial soaps and wipes are not in fact healthier but much sicker overall than children not so protected. The constant exposure to a world filled with bacteria, the world out of which we emerged as a species, in fact stimulates the immune health of all of us as we grow. We actually
need
to come into contact with the microorganisms of the world to be healthy.
    The truth is, we live in an ancient, healthy symbiosis with bacterial, viral, and microfaunal colonizers. Our bodies are much like the soil of the earth, covered inside and out with a broad diversity of microfauna providing an interdependent complex of support services. When we become ill, our symbiotic relationship with the healthy bacteria and other microfauna—our body ecology—is disturbed. The underlying factor that disrupts the body ecology is the illness, not the pathogenic bacteria that take advantage of it to occupy body sites. Antibiotics do not cure disease, they simply kill off opportunistic bacteria. Without the body’s ability to restore a healthy ecology, people die anyway. More than any other disease, AIDS has taught us the limitations of antibiotics and the bacterial model of disease. Irrespective of the quantities of antibiotics used, when AIDS patients’ bodies can no longer reestablish their internal ecology they die. As Marc Lappé says, “It is the
body
which ultimately controls infections, not chemicals. Without underlying immunity, drugs are meaningless.” 37 Ironically, as many public health historians now know, the major decreases in human mortality and disease proclaimed to be brought about by antibiotics were due more, in fact, to better public hygiene.
    Because they kill off so much of the internal symbiotic microfauna along with pathogenic bacteria, antibiotics create significant changesin human microfaunal ecology and makeup. The appearance of many diseases new to humankind such as certain nutrient deficiencies, candida