SUCCESS STORY W/O ANTIBIOTICS

[jrhardin@usa.net]

Beachlvr,

So great that you're feeling well & have your life back again! Probiotics are helpful in so many ways.

Joan

[handwasher]

jrhardin... Your publication of natural healing of c-diff was very well written and easy to understand. Thank you for sharing. My question...where can I buy these products you mention??? Continue to be well!

[jrhardin@usa.net]

If you live in New York City, you can get most of them at Lifethyme in the Village.
http://www.lifethymemarket.com/index.html

If you're somewhere else that doesn't have a health food store that carries these supplements, you could always order them online - some even from Amazon:

Saccharomyces boulardii + Mos:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_ ... Caps%2C190

BroccoMax:
http://www.amazon.com/Jarrow-Formulas-B ... 859&sr=1-1

Allicidin:
http://www.amazon.com/Premier-Research- ... 942&sr=1-1


PROBIOTICS

Repleniss:
http://www.acuatlanta.net/reacuteplenis ... 4AodVlecog

Hyper-Implante:
http://www.needs.com/product/InterPlexu ... Probiotics

Digestive:
http://enzymeresearchproducts.com/diges ... digestive/
(I'm not sure Enzyme Research Products sells through this site.)

Digestive, Repleniss, & Hyper-Implante were the probiotics my chiropractor gave me to replenish the good bacteria in my gut. I don't think they're the only ones that would work so maybe do some research.

Wishing you success in vanquishing your C. diff.
Joan

[handwasher]

Thanks so much for the info. I live in Pennsylvania! Our health food store just closed after 35 or more yrs. Also, what do you think of sauerkraut juice instead of sauerkraut? Just wondering.

[jrhardin@usa.net]

A shame about your health food store.

Sauerkraut juice should provide the same advantages as sauerkraut if it's the real deal - full of live cultures & not made with vinegar. Real, live culture sauerkraut is made only with cabbage & salt - it's fermented.

Or you could make your own homemade sauerkraut.

Joan

[handwasher]

Thanks Joan...A friend gave me 3 jars of kraut. Nothing like store bought. Soooo good. Told her I would buy some from her!

[jrhardin@usa.net]

Perfect!

[ashenpirate]

How wonderful! Good for you for fighting the good fight. I'm intrigued. If I ever have to, god forbid, face this C.Diff again in the future, I will probably use this new knowledge to combat it.

[jrhardin@usa.net]

Here's hoping you're done with C. diff forever!
Joan

[cdiffrun]

I agree with this approach. Glad to here someone else is having luck with it.

Doing the same thing over again is the definition of insanity. If antibiotics gave you c diff then you should not take them again! Your body is telling you something. It needs known good bacteria, not to have everything wiped out again!

[Beachlvr]

Agreed! Agreed! Agreed! Why take antibiotics if that is why you have c. diff in the first place!!! Isane!

[debdee]

Hi, I know this is an old post, but I wanted to post my experience with the probiotic that marthad said worked for her. I tried it and it gave me worse problems than the c.diff and it's even harder to rid my body of it. Look into the ingredients very carefully. One of the ingredients is a pathogenic bacteria. I'm just posting this to warn others that what works for one person does not always work for another. I was so desperate that I bought the probiotic and used it without really looking into the bacteria strains first. :( I'm glad that it worked so well for marthad, but it had a terrible effect on my health.

[jrhardin@usa.net]

Debdee,

After reading your post today, I looked up the probiotic called Symbion, the one touted for Candida albicans that marthad had recommended, & see its ingredients are:
Bacillus coagulans (200 million CFU*), Bacillus subtilus (100 million CFU), Enterococcus faecium (100 million CFU), Fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS).

Which one is the pathogenic bacteria?

This is Symbion's online info for its product:
http://www.symbionprobiotics.com/

Joan Hardin

[Chrisums]

After poking around on google, it appears that Enterococcus faecium is considered a human pathogen capable of causing several unsavory infections. The others all look good.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7530626
http://www.life.umd.edu/classroom/bsci4 ... coccus.htm (scroll down to talking about the VRE)
http://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php ... us_faecium (slightly easier to read format)

[jrhardin@usa.net]

Chrisums,

Rather amazing that a human pathogen would be included in any probiotic product available today. I hope you’re recovering from taking the Symbion. Reading of your unfortunate experience makes me very glad that I’ve had a longstanding policy of taking no probiotic or other nutritional supplement that hasn’t been recommended or vetted by at least one member of my alternative health care team.

After reading your post this morning, I did a Google search for Enterococcus faecium & learned that it used to be considered a harmless bacterium living in our guts but has now transitioned into one that’s a nosocomial pathogen. Nosocomial infections are also referred to as Hospital Acquired Infections - you’ll often see that shortened to just HAI.

Then I searched for “Enterococcus faecium & candida albicans’ and learned that both are nosocomial infections that are often drug resistant.

I also searched for “Enterococcus faecium treatment for Clostridium difficile” and found no first page results suggesting that bacterium is useful for treating C. diff.

I did find an article titled “Is There a Relationship Between Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococcal Infection and Clostridium difficile Infection?” authorized by the Chicago Veterans Affairs Healthcare System’s Medical Service & Northwestern University Medical School’s Department of Medicine.

It was a literature review on vancomycin-resistant enterococcus based on MEDLINE abstracts - published in 1997.

“The relatively recent descriptions of nosocomial infections due to vancomycin-resistant enterococcus (VRE) have raised questions regarding their relationship to another nosocomial infection, Clostridium difficile–associated diarrhea (CDAD). In particular, the question of whether treatment of C. difficile disease with oral vancomycin is a predisposing factor for VRE infection has been proposed. If oral vancomycin use is a risk factor, to what degree does it predispose to VRE infection? More recently, the use of metronidazole, another first-line treatment of C. difficile infection, has been implicated as a risk factor for VRE infection. Still other researchers have noted the similarities of the epidemiology of both infections in hospitalized patients and the possibility that the two infections share common risk factors.”

The authors concluded from their literature review that “there is a remarkably high number of risk factors that have been identified as common to both of these nosocomial infections”. They also noted that the control & prevention strategies to reduce the incidence of both the growing number of VRE infections & CDAD’s are also remarkably similar: barrier precautions (gloves, gowns, & hand washing) along with reduced or restricted use of antimicrobials.


I mention this article – published 15 years ago – to show that the medical community has known for some time that antibiotics such as vancomycin & metronidazole were causing various enterococcal bacteria, including C. diff, to mutate into drug resistant infections yet continued to prescribe them – and also, for the most part, has resisted implementing known control & prevention strategies.

To get back to the original subject of this post: I can’t imagine why any probiotic or other nutritional supplement would include Enterococcus faecium for any reason.

Joan Hardin