Drug interactions Archives

Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Can Live in Your Body For Years!

Digestive Health, Drug interactions, Probiotics / By @drHoberman

Summary: Did you know some antibiotic-resistant bacteria can live in your body for nearly a decade?

Once upon a time, antibiotics were considered miracle drugs used to treat serious health problems and control the spread of once-fatal diseases.

However, we have learned over time that antibiotics worked almost too well.

Patients and their physicians came to rely on them so often for common health problems — from colds to sinus infections — that they can stop working altogether, creating problems with resistance to common antibiotics like those derived from penicillin or cephalosporin.

When those antibiotic-resistant superbugs take over your body they could hang around for nearly 10 years, based on the findings of a recent study appearing in Nature Communications.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria hang on for a long time!

European researchers tracked the presence of two strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria (E. coli and K. pneumoniae) in 73 patients every time they were admitted to their hospital from 2008 to 2018.

More than 350 samples of drug-resistant bacteria were collected during that time. Most of those bacteria were discovered as part of routine hospital screenings, but 12.5 percent were detected because the patient was a suspected carrier of an infection.

Depending on the strain, these resistant bacteria could live in various areas of the human body for nearly five years (K. pneumoniae) or more than nine years (E. coli). But that’s not all…

“These patients not only repeatedly become ill themselves, they also act as a source of infection for other people, a reservoir for these pathogens,” says Dr. Lisandra Aguilar-Bultet, the study’s lead author and a research associate in microbial genomics and bioinformatics at Switzerland’s University Hospital of Basel.

What this means for you

Before you begin to panic, know this: Bacteria like E. Coli live in your intestines, and most strains do little to no harm, according to the Mayo Clinic. But there are some that can do harm, as shown in this study.

The good news: You can do a lot to lessen your need for antibiotics merely by following our simple-to-follow antibiotic protocol.

But there will be times that you will need to take an antibiotic for a health problem.

When you absolutely need to take an antibiotic, protect the healthy balance of bacteria in your gut — the center of your body’s immune system — by taking a probiotic, ideally with multiple strains of beneficial bacteria, like those found in EndoMune Advanced Probiotic.

Taking a probiotic like EndoMune about two hours before your prescribed antibiotic gives those beneficial bacteria a jump on reaching your gut and protecting it and you from harmful superbugs.

References

Nature Communications

University of Basel

LiveScience

Mayo Clinic

Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Can Live in Your Body For Years! Read More »

Safe to use Probiotics to help treat type 2 diabetes.

Probiotics: An Effective Treatment For Type 2 Diabetes?

Digestive Health, Disease, Drug interactions, Probiotics / By @drHoberman

Summary: Is it safe and helpful to take a probiotic if you’re coping with type 2 diabetes? This survey of studies gives a thumbs-up to probiotics!

As the epidemic of metabolic syndrome continues in America — thanks to a Western lifestyle that can kill you faster than smoking — the number of Americans dealing with type 2 diabetes is growing by the day.

Among the 38 million Americans who currently suffer from diabetes, roughly 90 percent of them are dealing with type 2 diabetes. (An alarming 22 percent don’t even know they have diabetes at all!)

You can do plenty of things to manage your health if you have type 2 diabetes, from diversifying your diet to include more unprocessed whole foods to finding more time during day to get moving with some form of exercise.

Researchers have also learned so much about how an unbalanced gut microbiome affects many aspects of human health, including how it creates many challenges for type 2 diabetes patients trying to regulate their blood sugar.

If you or a loved one is struggling with managing type 2 diabetes, taking a probiotic should be at the top of your to-do list too, based on a recent review of 33 studies appearing in Nutrients.

Nearly two-thirds of the studies Canadian researchers reviewed reported improvements in at least one measurement related to glycemic levels while taking a probiotic.

In addition, nearly half of those reports cited improvements in lipid levels after taking a probiotic. That’s very important given that elevated levels of LDL lipoproteins can greatly raise one’s risks of cardiovascular diseases.

Also, the benefits of multi-strain probiotics formulated with strains from the Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium families really stuck out with 16 studies reporting improvements in at least one glycemic measurement.

This makes sense given that the Bifidobacterium family enhances the production of healthy fatty acids and the digestion of fiber while promoting immune health and the Lactobacillus family assists the protection of the barrier lining the gut.

Finally, probiotics also worked very well with metformin, a go-to drug prescribed for type 2 diabetics, enriching the composition of gut bacteria, decreasing insulin resistance and increasing the abundance of beneficial short chain fatty acids (SCFAs).

While there’s much more research to be done, there’s little doubt that probiotics, especially those formulated with multiple strains of bacteria like EndoMune Advanced Probiotic, can be a boon to the health of type 2 diabetes patients.

Resources

Nutrients

News-Medical.net/Life Sciences

CDC

Mayo Clinic

Medline Plus

Probiotics: An Effective Treatment For Type 2 Diabetes? Read More »

Ozempic and Wegovy: Are New Weight Loss Drugs Really Safe?

Diet, Drug interactions, Probiotics / By @drHoberman

Ozempic and Wegovy: Are New Weight Loss Drugs Really Safe?

Summary: Recent reports about the safety of Ozempic and Wegovy, injectable drugs prescribed by doctors to help you lose weight, should make you think long and hard about using them.

You’ve probably heard a lot recently about a pair of blockbuster drugs — Wegovy and Ozempic (semaglutide) — for their effectiveness in helping people lose A LOT of weight.

Obesity affects so many Americans — more than 40 percent are obese according to the CDC — that people will try almost anything to lose weight.

Taking weekly injections of Wegovy or Ozempic work to slow down the emptying of the stomach and decrease one’s appetite, and could help someone drop about 12 percent of their body weight.

If these results sound almost too good to be true, the unfortunate reality for some patients has been heartbreaking and life-threatening.

The Problems with Semaglutide

According to reports received by the FDA, the most serious problems are associated with severe gastroparesis, also known as stomach paralysis. And, in one case reported by CNN, a woman suffered from severe gastroparesis along with nausea and cyclic vomiting syndrome (characterized by episodes of severe vomiting that can last for hours or days).

What’s more, the American Society of Anesthesiologists recently issued a warning urging patients to cease taking these medications up to a week before surgery. Their concern: A slower emptying of the stomach could allow patients to regurgitate and aspirate food into their airways and lungs when they’re sedated, even after fasting.

Even if you don’t have an extreme version of those kinds of problems, the most common side effects of Wegovy are nausea (44 percent of all users), diarrhea (30 percent) and vomiting and constipation (24 percent).

Also, for either of these drugs to work as directed, you must take them weekly to keep the weight off, or those extra pounds will come back quickly.

Are Weight Loss Drugs the Only Answer to Effective Weight Loss?

Did you know there’s a better, safer way to slow down your appetite, eat less and lose weight without the expense or common side effects of an injectable drug like Wegovy or Ozempic?

You may want to give your weight-loss journey a fresh start with the help of EndoMune Metabolic Rescue that contains 1 billion CFUs of beneficial Bifidobacterium lactis and 600 mg of the prebiotic XOS.

XOS is a proven prebiotic that spurs the production of short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) that trigger some of the same mechanisms Wegovy does to slow down the movement of food from your stomach and create a feeling of fullness naturally.

Resources

Ozempic and Wegovy: Are New Weight Loss Drugs Really Safe? Read More »

Simple graphic depicting a bottle of antibiotics surrounded by different colored illustrations of bacteria. Text says: "Why take probiotics with an antibiotic"

Why Take Probiotics With An Antibiotic

Digestive Health, Drug interactions / By @drHoberman

Why Take Probiotics With An Antibiotic

We spend a lot of time talking about antibiotics in this space for good reasons.

Once upon a time, antibiotics were considered “miracle” drugs and were prescribed for all kinds of reasons. Many of these uses were justified (strep throat was a fatal disease before antibiotics) but now these drugs are being prescribed for viral infections (common colds and the flu) that often create more health problems than solutions.

It’s hard to dispute how often antibiotics are prescribed inappropriately, based on the recent findings of an Oregon State University report on outpatient visits to health care providers.

In that Oregon State report, roughly 25 percent of the antibiotics were prescribed for the wrong reason and an additional 18 percent were prescribed for no reason at all, amounting to an alarming 56 million prescriptions during the study period.

Unfortunately, this unnecessary overuse of antibiotics coupled with our daily exposure to antimicrobial chemicals has created an environment in which these drugs often don’t work as they should or not at all.

At times in your life, you will need to take an antibiotic to resolve a health problem. That’s a given.

The number one piece of advice we consistently recommend: Take a probiotic, ideally one with multiple strains of beneficial bacteria like EndoMune Advanced Probiotic, to protect your gut, the center of your body’s immune system.

Although previous reports have cited probiotic benefits in reducing gut-related side effects when taking an antibiotic, some still question whether probiotics taken in conjunction with antibiotics protect the healthy composition and diversity of a patient’s microbiome.

However, a recent paper appearing in the Journal of Medical Microbiology confirms what we’ve been saying for a very long time.

The Probiotic Benefits

Researchers from TCU, the University of Texas and Mexico conducted a systematic review of 29 studies published over the past seven years related to how probiotics work alongside antibiotics.

Overall, the report concluded taking a probiotic with an antibiotic lessens or prevents changes to the composition of microbiomes, protects the diversity of species in the gut and even restores friendly bacterial species like Faecalibacterium prausnitzii that reduce inflammation.

When antibiotic treatments were combined with probiotics, the majority of those changes in gut bacteria were less pronounced and some were even prevented, says study co-author Dr. Elisa Marroquin, an assistant professor at TCU.

In fact, Dr. Morroquin says there is no good reason not to take a probiotic when antibiotics are prescribed.

Based on our antibiotic protocol (check out our Antibiotic 101 article), we suggest taking a probiotic like EndoMune about two hours before the prescribed antibiotic to give your microbiome time for those beneficial bacteria to reach your gut and protect your immune health.

Resources

Journal of Medical Microbiology

Microbiology Society

Medical News Today

Oregon State University

Why Take Probiotics With An Antibiotic Read More »

Acne, Antibiotics and Your Bones

Children’s Health, Drug interactions, Healthy Aging / By @drHoberman

Acne, Antibiotics and Your Bones

The human body develops as much as 40 percent of its peak bone mass during our teenage years, and at the same time our microbiome matures.

For many teens, those puberty years are often plagued with raging hormones leading to problems with acne.

When over-the-counter skin care products don’t do the job, often, dermatologists recommend prescription-strength creams in combination with an antibiotic.

Fortunately, most health experts recognize the damage antibiotics can do to deplete the beneficial bacteria in the human gut, especially when antibiotics are taken for extended periods of time.

What happens to a teenager’s health when dermatologists prescribe antibiotics for as long as two years?

The damage goes way beyond the human gut and may affect the development of a teenager’s bones as they mature, according to research appearing in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Here’s how…

Getting To The Gut

Scientists at the Medical University of South Carolina had previously conducted a study that showed how high doses of antibiotics triggered an inflammatory response that impaired the maturation of bones and increased the activity of osteoclasts that break down bone tissue.

These previous results led this team to study the effect one dose of a common antibiotic — minocycline, a member of the tetracycline class of drugs — would have on the bone growth of mice at a similar age as humans during puberty (6-12 weeks old).

Three concerning takeaways that affect gut health:

Mice didn’t experience an inflammatory response as before, but the presence of an antibiotic changed the healthy mix of gut bacteria that triggered a decrease in bone mass and affected how their skeletons matured.
The long-term use of antibiotics prevented the tiny microbiomes and skeletons of mice from recovering to a stable state even after the antibiotics were stopped.
Not only did the presence of an antibiotic disrupt the composition of gut bacteria, it also affected the way the liver communicates to the small intestine via bile acids, triggering significant decreases in the formation of bones.

Probiotic Protection

While antibiotics still remain one of the go-to treatments for acne, health organizations like the American Academy of Dermatology recommend taking them for the shortest effective duration to prevent future problems with antibiotic resistance.

However, if you really need to take an antibiotic, a recent report we shared with you points to evidence that taking a probiotic can be effective for treating acne as well as protecting the health of your gut.

To get the protection you need, be sure that any probiotic you take is formulated with multiple and proven strains of beneficial bacteria from the Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium families like the healthy mix contained in EndoMune Advanced Probiotic.

Resources

The Journal of Clinical Investigation

Medical University of South Carolina

American Academy of Dermatology

Mayo Clinic

Acne, Antibiotics and Your Bones Read More »

How To Take An Antibiotic

Drug interactions / By @drHoberman

Do You REALLY Know How to Take an Antibiotic?

After all the years and the repeated health warnings, you’d assume people would be more careful about how they take an antibiotic, but you would be very wrong, according to a national survey conducted by the University of Michigan.

Researchers surveyed more than 2,200 patients between ages 50-80 about their use of antibiotics as part of the school’s ongoing work with the National Poll on Healthy Aging.

Are You Overusing Antibiotics?

A vast majority of patients (89 percent) believe overusing antibiotics can lead to a time when they no longer work as they’re prescribed and even more say they’re cautious about using them (91 percent).

Unfortunately, the poll numbers drop sharply when patients are asked about their own use of antibiotics.

For example, a majority believe antibiotics are over-prescribed, yet 41 percent would expect to receive a prescription if they saw their physician with a persistent problem like a cold or the flu.

Also, 34 percent of the patients polled believed a course of antibiotics would relieve a cold or the flu although neither respond to them, according to the CDC.

The other serious issue researchers discovered was a small but consistent number of patients (about 13 percent) who were prescribed an antibiotic but never finished taking them, increasing the risk of future resistance.

And what did patients do with the leftover antibiotics? More than half the time, they took those drugs without consulting their physician…

Follow Our Antibiotic Protocol

A quick look at these numbers is another sobering reminder that people remain unaware about the real problems with antibiotic resistance, underscoring the findings of a 2019 report from Oregon State University that concluded 43 percent of antibiotics prescribed in America were completely unnecessary.

What’s more, overusing antibiotics is only part of the problem, especially when you add exposures to antibacterial chemicals in soaps, paints and other unexpected places.

All of these things lead to health problems that cannot be treated by the tools we have currently have, plus they disrupt and deplete the balance of gut bacteria that keeps your immune system strong.

Should you have any concerns about taking antibiotics and how to use them safely (if you need them), take a couple of minutes to review our Antibiotics 101 article that features some simple steps you can take to lessen the need for them.

If you absolutely need an antibiotic, be sure to protect the healthy balance of bacteria in your gut by taking a probiotic about two hours before that necessary medication to give it extra time to reach the center of your immune system.

When you’re evaluating a good probiotic, consider ones that feature multiple strains of proven beneficial bacteria from the Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium families and a prebiotic (that feeds the good bugs in your gut), like EndoMune Advanced Probiotic.

Resources

Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology

University of Michigan Mhealth Lab

National Poll on Healthy Aging

Oregon State University

CDC

How To Take An Antibiotic Read More »

Taking Too Much Melatonin

Drug interactions / By @drHoberman

A Sleepy Problem: Taking Too Much Melatonin

There’s no doubt that getting a good night’s sleep is one of the best, easiest and most restorative things you can do for your body.

Some health experts have even compared your body’s need for sleep to a computer that needs to “reboot” from time to time so it runs better.

When people have problems getting the right amount of sleep due to shift work, jet lag, or insomnia, many take the easy way out by turning to an over-the-counter sleep aid like melatonin for help.

Unfortunately, taking what most people assume is a “safe” sleep aid creates its own set of problems, especially for kids, according to a recent study from the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report that details a dramatic increase in poisonings involving melatonin.

By The Numbers

Between 2012-2021, the number of children who had ingested too much melatonin ballooned by a staggering 530 percent to more than 52,000, according to data collected by the American Association of Poison Control Centers’ National Poison Data System.

During that decade. the number of calls to poison control exploded from 2012 (0.6 percent) to 2021 (4.9 percent). Nearly 28,000 children received care for a melatonin overdose, more than 4,000 children were hospitalized (mostly teenagers) and two babies (under age 2) died. Melatonin overdosing hit its peak prior to the coronavirus pandemic (a 38 percent jump from 2019 to 2020).

These rising numbers may have also shed light on an even deeper and known problem: A significant variance in the amount of melatonin contained in supplements based on their labelling.

The amounts of melatonin in a tablet may deviate from a decrease of 83 percent to an increase as high as 478 percent (based on its labelled content), according to a 2017 study in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine.

Although most of you recognize melatonin as a supplement, it’s also a hormone produced and released by the pineal gland in the brain. The production of melatonin is light-sensitive too, meaning the pineal gland produces more melatonin at night to help us get to sleep and much less during the day.

What’s more, some foods produce melatonin naturally (flaxseeds, walnuts, yellow bell peppers, almonds and goji berries) but not enough to make a real difference in your sleep.

So, if melatonin can be problematic, what do you do to get more sleep that doesn’t involve a drug?

Safer, More Effective Sleep Solutions

If you’re looking for ways to improve your rest, there’s plenty of safe and easy ways to do it as we described in our recent Sleep 101 blog.

Maintaining a consistent sleep schedule and routine, shutting down the tablet and keeping your bedroom cool and comfortable can go a long way toward helping you get the shuteye your body needs.

Your gut also plays a role in your quest for more sleep too, as studies have shown how consuming prebiotics, the parts of vegetables made of non-digestible plant fibers and carbohydrates, can be just as helpful.

But it can be challenging to eat enough vegetables every day to make a real difference in your sleep.

However, you can ensure your family and your kids get the prebiotics they need by taking a probiotic like EndoMune Junior and EndoMune Advanced Probiotic that contains multiple strains of beneficial bacteria from the Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium families and a prebiotic (FOS) derived from plant fibers.

Resources

Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report

Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine

Slate

NPR

McGill Office for Science and Society

Mayo Clinic

Taking Too Much Melatonin Read More »

UTIs 101

Drug interactions, Women’s Health / By @drHoberman

UTI 101: The Antibiotic Challenge

What’s worse than experiencing a urinary tract infection (UTI)? For as many as 30 percent of all women, it’s knowing that they may experience another UTI at some point over the following six months.

Several variables can play a role in making women more vulnerable to recurrent UTIs than others, according to the Mayo Clinic:

Estrogen levels changing during menopause.
The shape of your urinary tract.
Bacteria invading your urethra during sex.
The presence of bladder or kidney stones.

The common bacteria issue that triggers a UTI, at least 85 percent of the time, is exposure to E. coli bacteria.

Typically, physicians prescribe a round of antibiotics to treat a UTI, usually with good success. But what happens in cases when these infections happen repeatedly and why?

Bad Bacteria In Hiding

A team of scientists from Washington University School of Medicine, Harvard and MIT tracked the health of 31 women over the course of a year, including 15 with histories of recurrent UTIs, via blood and urine samples taken at the start of the study period and stool samples collected every month.

During those 12 months, 24 UTIs were diagnosed and only from women who had already experienced infections. When patients were diagnosed with a UTI, additional blood, stool and urine samples were taken, according to the study appearing in Nature Microbiology.

Interestingly, researchers found the presence of E. coli had nothing to do with repeat UTI infections.

The real difference-maker among women experiencing recurrent UTIs was a more common problem: A less diverse balance of healthy gut bacteria, allowing more disease-causing species to hang around and multiply.

Also, women with recurrent UTIs had microbiomes that contained low amounts of bacteria that produce butyrate, the short-chain fatty acids created when the gut processes soluble fiber that reduces chronic low-grade inflammation.

Better Options For Treating UTIs

Although more laypeople understand the problems with taking antibiotics and sometimes taking multiple rounds of them, the ones who don’t seem to be doctors…

Many physicians who ignore the connection between UTIs and good gut health prescribe antibiotics in a vacuum hoping that throwing more drugs at the problem will eventually solve it. Unfortunately, that strategy often makes things worse, according to Dr. Scott Hultgren, co-senior author of the study.

The women in the group with no recurrent UTIs were better able to clear the bad bacteria before they caused problems than those experiencing recurrent infections due to “a distinct immune response to bacterial invasion of the bladder potentially mediated by the gut microbiome,” says lead study author Dr. Colin Worby.

“Our study clearly demonstrates that antibiotics do not prevent future infections or clear UTI-causing strains from the gut, and they may even make recurrence more likely by keeping the microbiome in a disrupted state.”

There are plenty of things you can do to avoid a UTI that have nothing to do with taking a drug, from following good hygiene practices to staying hydrated and avoiding products that irritate your urethra.

And, if you’re looking for solutions for handling a UTI or preventing one from reoccurring, consider taking a probiotic with multiple species of beneficial bacteria from the Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus families like EndoMune Advanced Probiotic.

References

Nature Microbiology

Washington University School of Medicine

Medical News Today

Harvard Medical School

Mayo Clinic

Emerging Infectious Diseases

UTIs 101 Read More »

Antibiotics For Babies: Proceed With Caution

Children’s Health, Drug interactions / By @drHoberman

Early Antibiotics May Harm Your Baby’s Gut

When we discuss the overuse of antibiotics, it’s usually focused on adults who rely on them too often to treat health problems that would be resolved in time on their own.

This over-reliance can often mean these one-time “miracle drugs” may not work when they’re truly necessary, and create openings for more health problems down the road.

Few of us expect babies to be exposed to antibiotics so early, but we recently learned how often they’re prescribed — even once — for little ones under age 2 may increase the possibility of food allergies, obesity and many more health challenges.

What’s more, little good happens when infants are treated with antibiotics during their first week of life, according to a recent report in Nature Communications.

Too Much Exposure To Antibiotics

Experts estimate as many as 10 percent of all newborns are prescribed an antibiotic and that doctors justify them based on “suspected” infections.

This overprescribing is justified by some doctors to prevent a problem they suspect could happen and get serious in a hurry, although a small number of babies ultimately experience an infection.

With those facts in mind, a team of researchers from the UK and The Netherlands conducted a clinical trial involving 227 babies to observe how antibiotics would affect their tiny microbiomes.

Nearly 150 babies with “suspected” sepsis were treated by one of three antibiotics, with the remainder were part of a control group who received no antibiotics. All babies had fecal or rectal samples taken before and after treatments at 1, 4 and 12 months of age.

Among the infants who were prescribed an antibiotic, the harmful effects were obvious.

Babies experienced significant decreases in various species of Bifidobacterium, microbes that help them better digest breast milk and support their good gut health.
Scientists observed a change in more than 250 strains of bacteria in the guts of babies, flipping the balance in favor of more unhealthy harmful microbes.
Those microbial changes lasted at least 12 months and did not improve with breastfeeding.
Among the antibiotics prescribed, the combination of penicillin and gentamicin was the least detrimental on a newborn’s microbiome.

The start of antibiotic treatment, not its duration, appears to be trigger for gut health problems, says researcher Dr. Marlies van Houten, a pediatrician at the Spaarne Hospital in The Netherlands.

A Probiotic In Your Baby’s Future?

The evidence is clear that antibiotics are prescribed way too often, and breastfeeding may not restore the developing microbiomes of infants, so what are your options?

Should an antibiotic be necessary, we recommend talking to your pediatrician about giving your baby a probiotic with multiple species of beneficial bacteria that can boost the critical balance of bugs in their tiny microbiomes.

If you’re looking for a probiotic with the right made for your baby, consider EndoMune Jr. Powder formulated with 10 billion CFUs of beneficial bacteria from the Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium families plus a prebiotic that feeds their developing microbiome.

Just a half-teaspoon of EndoMune Jr. sprinkled in your baby’s formula or added to soft foods (when your baby is ready for them) once a day can make a gut-healthy difference!

Resources

Nature Communications

University of Edinburgh

Medscape

Antibiotics For Babies: Proceed With Caution Read More »

Graphic of large intestine next to a pharmaceutical prescription bottle. Text reads "Antibiotics: Rising Colon Cancer Risks Among Young People

Antibiotics And The Risk Of Colon Cancer

Disease, Drug interactions, Probiotics / By @drHoberman

Antibiotics: Rising Colon Cancer Risks Among Young People

For a very long time, health professionals and patients believed colon cancer — the third most common cancer among Americans — was a major health challenge mainly for older folks.

That perception changed for good recently, when the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force recommended lowering initial screenings for colon cancer to age 45.

That was a huge wake-up call, but a very necessary one given the steady increase in younger colon cancer cases and lower screening rates among that age group.

That uptick also reflects data collected by the American Cancer Society that found patients born in 1990 have double the risk of colon cancer compared to people born in 1950.

All of this underscores the fact that colon cancer is a multi-faceted problem, including several risk factors (poor diets and sedentary lifestyles) well within our control.

We can now add antibiotics to the growing list of concerns based a pair of recent reports from the UK and Sweden.

More Antibiotics, More Colon Cancer Reports

Most of you are very well aware of the disruptive nature of antibiotics, and not just to the balance of bacteria in your gut.

Antibiotics have been prescribed so often for health problems, including viral conditions like the flu and common colds that they’re not equipped to treat, they don’t work when we really need them.

Based on two large analyses of patients in Scotland and Sweden, this very liberal use of antibiotics may increase one’s colon cancer risks too.

In the Swedish analysis that studied the health of 40,000 patients from the Swedish Colorectal Cancer Registry from 2010-16 to 200,000 cancer-free patients, antibiotics increased the risk of colon cancer by 17 percent.

What’s more, Swedish scientists believe the disruptive impact of antibiotics on the microbiome is the probable trigger for this increase in colon cancer patients.

The Scottish review of 8,000 colon cancer patients that compared to an equal number of healthy folks found a similar increase in colon cancer rates across all age groups, with one more very alarming trend.

The risk of colon cancer among patients under age 50 was elevated by nearly 50 percent, compared to 9 percent in the above age 50 group. What’s more, very common quinolone (like Cipro) and sulfonamide (like Bactrim) antibiotics were associated with cancers on the right side of the colon where microbiomes reside.

So, how can colon cancer risks jump so high for younger folks apart from the overuse of antibiotics and sedentary lifestyle habits?

Experts believe the lack of routine screenings for young people from ages 20-40 account for high colon cancer rates. Moreover, fewer physicians and younger patients will connect unusual abdominal pains with colon cancer, thus those problems will be detected much later when the disease is harder to treat.

What You Can Do!

First, it’s important to remember that taking any antibiotics should be done wisely and cautiously. If you have any concerns about an antibiotic (or any other drug), don’t hesitate to consult with your doctor or pharmacist.

When an antibiotic is necessary, please take it as prescribed by your physician until your course is completed, not only until you’re feeling better.

Want to lessen your need for antibiotics? I urge you to review my recent Antibiotics 101 article for some very important tips that cover everything from good hand-cleaning rules to monitoring your use of prescription pain relievers.

If you want to protect the healthy balance of bacteria in your gut, especially while you’re taking an antibiotic, be sure to take a probiotic about two hours afterward. (Check out our article on the basics of How to Take a Probiotic for more guidance.)

Also, there’s growing evidence we’ve shared here about the benefits of taking a probiotic in relation to treating and possibly preventing colon cancer.

Remember that any probiotic you consider should include multiple strains of beneficial bacteria to protect your gut, the center of your body’s immune system, like those found in like EndoMune Advanced Probiotic.

Resources

Journal of the National Cancer Institute

Umea University

Annals of Oncology

National Cancer Institute

WebMD

Keck Medicine of USC

European Society for Medical Oncology

Antibiotics And The Risk Of Colon Cancer Read More »