Excerpted and abridged from No More Allergies, Asthma or Sinus Infections: The Revolutionary Approach to Eliminating Upper Respiratory Problems—Including Children’s Middle Ear Infections by Dr. Lon Jones.
Warfare has always been a part of our lives in America. We were born of a Revolutionary War, preserved by a Civil War and made safe by a series of wars against our enemies, including our current War on Terrorism.
Our bodies are also periodically involved in warfare. Bacteria and viruses regularly invade us and could cause us to be seriously ill were it not for the immune system in each of us that deals with most of these agents before they can bother us. When we do get signs of an infection, we generally rely on antibiotics to help us destroy the invading agents.
Our arms race with bacteria occurs when we use antibiotics to kill the infecting agent and the agent develops ways to get around them. The resistance bacteria acquire prompts us to create the next generation of more potent antibiotics, and the cycle continues.
Bacteria, like all living agents, sense and adapt to their environments, and bacteria are the experts at this process. When challenged with antibiotics, or in any other way, bacteria increase their rate of mutation to find a way to cope with the threat. Again, not all of them do so, but enough do that they are more often successful at finding a way around the challenge.
Working in cooperation with several hospitals and utilizing a program it calls “positive deviance” the Plexus Institute has addressed the issue of bacterial resistance, especially focusing on MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). At a recent nursing conference, the director of the Plexus Institute, Curt Lindberg, described the results. Most of the measures developed using positive deviance are those that block bacterial transmission, like those along the lines proposed by Paul Ewald in his book, Evolution of Infectious Disease. Lindberg related at this conference that the CDC, which had been monitoring the bacteria at these cooperating hospitals, reported that the Staph aureus remaining after the positive deviance actually had lost some of its resistance. That is exactly what we should expect from such measures because the bacteria are adapting to their context, and if there is no increase threat in that context, they will adapt toward less resistance. Antibiotics kill bacteria; they are a threat, and they lead to resistance. Reducing antibiotics is the time-tested way to decrease resistance, and addressing and blocking their transmission is now shown to do this as well. We argue that blocking adherence of the bacteria accomplishes the same thing. There are also other options for dealing with infectious diseases.
SIMPLE AND REASONABLE, BUT UNCONTROLLABLE AND INEXPENSIVE, SO NOT EVEN TRIED
Nathan Sharon and his colleagues have been arguing for at least 20 years that sugars can be effectively used to prevent infectious disease. Bacteria attach to specific sugar complexes on the cell surfaces in our bodies, and if they can’t attach to these sugars, they are washed out and don’t cause infection.
Feeding the proper sugars to the bacteria fills up their hungry receptors, leaving them with no means of attaching; it decreases their adherence to the cells in our bodies. Regular use of such sugars also isolates the infectious agents and selects for bacteria that cause fewer problems as we saw with E. coli and urinary infections. The sugars in cranberries select for bacteria that don’t cause urinary tract infections. Xylitol decreases the adherence of problem-causing bacteria in the nose and selects for bacteria that cause fewer problems there.
Bacteria that live in the nose without causing problems cause sinus, ear and bronchial infections when they move out of the nose and into these neighboring areas. Putting these sugars into the appropriate bacterial environment doesn’t kill or threaten bacteria; it just fills up their hungry receptors and gives them something to hold on to besides us. Sharon thinks that these sugars may be a part of the bacterial communication system, and what they seem to say to the bacteria is essentially “shape up or ship out.” When they are used regularly, the sugars compete at the binding sites so the bacteria can’t hold on and are then easily washed out of our bodies.
The problem with these sugars is that they have to be used every day, even when there is no sign of infection; this message—to shape up or ship out—is best delivered regularly. In one study, women drank cranberry extract every day for six months, but they had protection from urinary infections for a year. Our ancestor who first fed cooked meat to a wolf had to feed it every day, for a long, long time, before the wolf became a dog, and our best friend. Maybe we can do the same with bacteria. Ewald thinks it’s possible and using sugars to negotiate makes it a whole lot easier. These bacterial adaptations give us examples of how all animals adapt—including humans. If we change their environment in ways that attack the agent, pressure is applied for them to adapt defensively to cope with the threat—they become stronger and more determined enemies. If we change the environment in ways that are not threatening, they are more likely to adapt toward living with the host—toward domestication; Joseph Nye calls it “soft power” and shows how it works, even in international relations.
I live in the Bible Belt in the middle of the Texas Panhandle. In our community we take pride in our Christian heritage and that our nation is based on Christian principles. In searching for what it means to be a Christian, I keep returning to the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus says, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” This difficult task is, to me, the litmus test of a real Christian. Doing good to our enemies by feeding them worked in the Philippines, where guerrilla fighters were given jobs as they gave up their arms. But most of the time we tend to feed others with more armaments rather than addressing their basic needs as we perpetuate the use of hard power around the world.
Ever since Pasteur discovered the bacteria that cause anthrax and came up with the germ theory, we have been at war with these microbes. Early on in this war we thought the enemy was only an aggressor that was trying to kill us. It wasn’t until relatively recently that we realized how really dependent we are on the bacteria living in us and with us. They are a significant part of the primary defenses in all of those vulnerable open areas of our bodies where their friendly biofilm protects us from countless pathogens. This is especially true in the gastrointestinal and the female genital tracts, but it holds for the nose and upper respiratory tract as well. And it has only been more recently that we began thinking about the effect of our antibiotics on these friendly bacteria. Few have heard about these concerns because antibiotics are so profitable, a cultural mindset James Galbraith attributes to the fact that there is a financial benefit somewhere. We do know now that killing off all of the bad bacteria is neither practical nor possible. We need other options. Xylitol for washing your nose is one of the smartest options. Who would have thought that we would be making docile pets of these once predaceous bacterial strains?
Xylitol is like soap for the nose, soap that can be used regularly and easily. The frequent use of soap and water on the hands is accepted as the easiest and best way to stop the spread of communicable diseases. Easier, better and more effective is washing your nose just as often with a spray containing an adequate amount of xylitol. The bacteria and viruses don’t get into our bodies through our hands, but we introduce them ourselves when we rub our eyes or nose. Of course, we should wash our hands, but it also makes sense to wash the nose.
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February 11th, 2012 at 2:39 AM