Warning over new threat from MRSA (Back to your pig pen swine flu here comes SUPERBUG!)

Grapefruit Seed Extract kills it.

Thanks for the info.

I had heard it was a very high number.

36,000 flu deaths per year must be an acceptable number since those deaths don't constitute a crisis or mass closings of schools, business and events?

Those 36,000 deaths reflect a fact of life. People die.

We do what we can to prevent it, and accept the reality of it.

I still haven’t heard of one actual death of a U.S. Citizen from the latest swine flu, involving a person that wasn’t seriously compromised to start with.

I disagree that this is just another “scare” drummed up by the media. This is a very serious problem that needs to be addressed, as our methods of treatment are dwindling rapidly. This isn’t the old days where if you skinned your knee, you clean it up and go on with your life. A simple scratch can literally kill you now.

I speak from some experience. I had (or have - if you believe the doctors when they say you never get rid of it) MRSA. In fact, I’ve battled it three times.

It started in early 2005. I was working on my house putting up sheetrock. While cutting a piece, I sliced my finger. It wasn’t a bad cut, but I thought I should go to the hospital for some stitches. I went in and walked out with two stitches - and a serious infection.

It didn’t come out until about four months later when I was backpacking with my son on the Appalachian Trail. I started to get what I thought were spider bites. I figured something had crawled into my sleeping bag and bit me. They kept getting bigger and more painful however, and when I got back I visited a doctor who did some tests. They came back positive for MRSA.

They put me on a heavy antibiotic regimen, and slowly, the lesions started to go away, then they disappeared entirely. I figured “whoo-hoo, I’m cured!”. But six months later, the lesions returned. This time, the doctor put me on a cocktail of several antibiotics, for a much longer period of time. The regimen killed every bacteria in my body - including the good ones. I experienced one of the nastiest cases of thrush you can imagine. I actually worried that I might be getting throat cancer.

Then - something worse happened.

I was working on some cement slabs in front of my house, trying to break them up, when the cement chisel rebounded out of the concrete and plunged into my leg. It hurt, and it was deep, but I certainly didn’t want to go back to that hospital for stitches and maybe another infection. So I cleaned it up, bandaged it well, and went on my way. Four days later, I couldn’t walk. My leg had swelled up and I was in excruciating pain. Heading to a specialist, he ran a lot of tests and determined that my MRSA had been carried by the chisel to the bone. After only four days, six inches of my tibia was infected. This was SERIOUS. The orthopedic surgeon (one of the best in Philadelphia) told me that they needed to stop it or would kill me. He told me that I should prepare for the possibility of amputation.

I was freaked.

I am an athlete. I played Division 1 hockey at a major university. I raced mountain bikes. I average about 2500 miles a year on my road bike. Now, I was faced with losing my leg - or worse, my life - all because of a stupid 1/2-inch cut on my thumb.

The doctors ran test after test. They installed a pick line in my heart and for four months, I was to plug into a piece of luggage each day for heavy antibiotic treatment. For the first two months, nothing changed. The infection persisted. The doctor very bluntly informed me that I need to get ready for amputation. I was very dismayed.

I went to the surgeon and asked him: “Look, I’m going to lose my leg. I understand that. It hurts like hell, but if I’m going to lose it anyway, can I at least get back on my bike?” I hadn’t been riding my bike since the bone infection had been diagnosed. The doctor thought for a moment, then said: “You know, what? I say ride your bike. I encourage you to do it. What’s the worse that could happen?”

It was from that day on, that my leg began to heal.

The doctors had several theories about my recovery. The best one they had was that the added circulation from my riding improved the flow of antibiotics past the bone. My bike probably saved my life - if not at least my leg.

Personally, I think I’ve been completely healed. It’s been three years since my last MRSA outbreak - although I still get paranoid when I see a pimple on my leg. I’m thinking that the assault of all of those antibiotics while being treated for my leg infection drove off the remaining MRSA bacteria. Doctors and nurses tell me I’m delusional. They say that I will always have MRSA and that it could come back at any time.

I’m hoping for the best, but this is a very serious problem. Normal methods of treatment work less and less on this infection. And as it builds immunity, we are running out of solutions. These bacteria were harmless only a generation before, but our insistence on taking antibiotics for every sniffle we’ve had over the years (ridiculous considering that these problems are caused by VIRUSES, not bacteria), we’ve backed ourselves into a corner that we may not be able to get out of soon.

Any infection can be deadly if not treated, but run out of treatments, and they all will be deadly.

In this case at least, the fears are justified.

http://infectiousdiseases.about.com/b/2009/04/30/swine-flu-death-by-influenza.htm

“In severe cases of untreated influenza, the infection can lead to pneumonia, which is the main cause of influenza death. In some cases of influenza, damage to the respiratory tissue allows other infectious microbes to invade and cause secondary infections, leading to bacterial pneumonia, which can also be fatal when untreated. There are an estimated 36,000 deaths due to seasonal influenza each year in the US.”

I misspoke; secondary bacterial pneumonia is the MAIN cause of death from influenza; I omitted Cytokine Storm, which affects young adults.

One good way to suppress bad bugs in your mouth and throat is to use xylitol to sweeten coffee, tea, etc. The bugs eat the xylitol sensing it as a sugar, but it kills them since it is a sugar-alcohol. Xylitol is a synthetic sugar that has been in use for over 60 years. The only odd side effect is that it seems to counter osteoporosis for reasons not well understood.

actually if you read your own source, influenza pneumonia is the main cause of death. (viral pneumonia) It can not only kill directly but also leads to ARDS, (adult respiratory distress syndrome) which can be very nasty.

What scares me about it though is that MRSA is very hard to kill. It often seems like it’s gone but it just stays undetected.

The CDC makes this assessment: (36,000 is spot on)

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/us_flu-related_deaths.htm