Antibiotics in autoimmune diseases
Autoimmune Disease & Causes The Hidden Epidemic.By Gabe Mirkin M.D.
Before I prescribe any medication, I ask myself whether it will help or hurt. All of the autoimmune diseases cause severe disability. Conventional medications neither cure these diseases nor stop the progressive destruction that they cause. Doctors prescribe immune suppressive that sometimes have deadly effects. Antibiotics are far safer that the drugs conventionally used to treat these diseases. So, if antibiotics can be shown to help control these diseases, they should be used long before a doctor thinks of using the conventional immune suppressive.
When a germ gets into your body, you are supposed to produce cells and proteins called antibodies that attach to and kill that germ. These diseases are felt by many doctors to be caused by your own immunity. Instead of doing its job of killing germs, your immunity attacks your own tissue. If it attacks your joints, it's called reactive arthritis; if it attacks your intestines, it's called Crohn's disease; your colon, it's called ultra ulcerative colitis; and if it fills your lungs with mucous, it's called late onset asthma. I do not believe that your immunity is that stupid.
Accumulating data show that all of these conditions can be caused by infection. Many diseases that were thought to be autoimmune turn out to be infections: stomach ulcers are caused by bacterium, helicobacter pylori and others; multiple sclerosis may be caused by HHS-6 virus; rheumatic fever is caused by the bacterium, beta streptococcus, group A; Guillian-Barre syndrome may be caused by the bacterium, campylobacter; Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis by E. Coli, Klebsiella and Bacteroides; and so forth.
Shouldn't We Be Concerned About Resistant Bacteria?
The argument that giving antibiotics causes bacteria to be resistant to that antibiotic is reasonable, but it has no place in discouraging people with these diseases from taking them. First, these people have serious diseases that cause permanent damage life and death. Second, the treatments that are available are toxic, shorten life, cause cancer, and have to be followed by frequent blood tests. On the other hand, I prescribe derivatives of tetracycline and erythromycin. These are extraordinarily safe and do not require drawing frequent blood tests.
If you were to become infected subsequently with bacteria that are resistant to these antibiotics, you would have lost nothing. No reasonable doctor would prescribe erythromycin or tetracycline for acute serious diseases, such as meningitis, pneumonia, or an abscess, because tetracyclines and erythromycins do not kill germs, they only stop them from multiplying. Instead, doctors prescribe far more bacteriocidal antibiotics that kill bacteria.
Many doctors criticize my use of antibiotics, but many antibiotics are far safer than conventional treatment, cost less, can be administered by a general practitioner, and often cure the condition, rather that just suppressing symptoms. I know that most physicians who develop these conditions will treat themselves with antibiotics because they know that conventional treatments with prednisone, chloroquine, azathioprine, and methotrexate are toxic and my treatments with erythromycins and tetracyclines are safe.