The Antibiotic Lie and Natural Alternatives

Hey everyone, welcome to the Dr. Josh Axe Show. I am your host, Dr. Axe, and on today's episode I'll be talking about antibiotics and how I almost died, what I did to thrive and survive, and specifically how I personally had to get on IV antibiotics for an entire month. That's 4 weeks plus a couple days, uh, and how I protected my gut and my cells in the process.

If a lot of people had taken an entire month of antibiotics, they could come down with another infection like C. diff later on. They would have loose stools for sometimes months or years. But I was able to, through a protocol designed by myself and Jordan Rubin and other doctors, I was able to protect my gut, protect my cells.

And if you've ever taken an antibiotic yourself, anytime in your life, you're gonna wanna hear this.

Also, if you've ever eaten non-organic food, In your life, you're gonna wanna hear this because there are, is actually antibiotic residue in your meat, in your dairy, in your produce, in your water, and a lot of the food we eat that kills off a lot of good bacteria in your gut and your body, which then has major side effects. So in this episode, I'll also be covering the top natural antibiotics.

I'll talk about the, the difference between taking antibiotics and antivirals in terms of herbs and vitamins and supplements.

And I'll go through really, if you've ever taken an antibiotic or have to in the future for you or a family member the exact protocol you should follow in terms of probiotic dosage, in terms of the herbs, the vitamins, the minerals, the nutrients, and everything else you need to know in terms of how to heal yourself using natural medicine.

And I'll be going through and exposing the truth about antibiotics. And some of the stats I'm going to go through, I was even surprised to read when I found it out. And when you hear some of these numbers, I think you're going to be surprised or even shocked as well. Now, to start, I want to share with you how I personally had to take drugs for the first time since I was probably 19 years old.

So when I was in high— when growing up, my family was always taking drugs and medications anytime that we were sick. It was just natural. We went into our doctor, he prescribed a drug. Every time it was an antibiotic, and that's just what we did. And because of it, I would get bronchitis for like a couple months every, every winter. I was constantly sick.

And, um, and finally in college I started eating healthier, and then I really didn't get sick as often. Now, last time I had taken medication was when I was 19 years old and I had my wisdom teeth removed. Okay. And so I got them out, and just for 3 days total, I took a little bit of things for pain and then stopped taking it because I knew that there were side effects of those drugs.

And so I was aware of that early on. And then I really did not take a medication up until I was 40 years old, actually 41 years old. And this is when I went in, and many of you know this, I'm gonna tell this in a very succinct manner, but I went in to get a simple procedure for my back.

I'd injured my back lifting weights, and I got an injection of stem cells, which was supposed to help my back, but instead I ended up getting a spinal infection where I sat down with a doctor and he said, Josh, listen, you're likely gonna be permanently disabled from this. And this happened from when I'm recording this, just 2 years ago. And I went through a lot emotionally.

You could go back and watch other episodes where I really cover this in detail, but on this episode I'll be going through how I healed and protected myself from the antibiotics. And he said, listen, a lot of times we put people on 12 weeks— that's 3 months of antibiotic therapy, 6 weeks IV and another 6 weeks oral.

And he said, um, because this infection is so severe— I had an infection in my disc, in my bone, it's called osteomyelitis— where imagine you have pus or an infection on your skin. Well, that was happening inside my bone and an abscess by my spinal cord, and so I had to take antibiotics.

However, when I took those, I knew the damaging side effects, and so I did everything in my power to take them as short as possible while at the same time killing the bacterial infection that was going on within my disc by my spinal cord and in my bones.

And so I want to share today exactly how I protected my gut and cells from that and ended up, even after that, Uh, by the way, I just did this test called GlycanAge, and my age is about 9 years younger than my biological age, they say, or my, my, my, my chronological age.

And I think part of that is all of these protocols I've been doing for longevity and for healing in order to protect my body, uh, using food-based medicine, which you're going to learn about a lot of this today.

So let me go ahead now, dive in, and I'm going to talk about antibiotics, everything you need to know about them, and then I'm going to get into What you need to do to protect yourself, cleanse yourself of the bad bacteria, cleanse yourself of antibiotic residue, and what you can do next time you're faced with a decision of taking an antibiotic or doing something natural.

By the way, before I jump into this content, hey, don't forget, if you're not subscribed, make sure to subscribe to the channel or you're going to be missing out on some content that could transform your life and the life of others. By the way, thank you all of you who are sharing this. Thank you for so many of you who have jumped on, on Apple and Spotify and left a 5 5-star review.

All of you on YouTube who have just, you know, been commenting and sharing this. So thanks everybody who's been on mission with me to help heal people using natural methods. Okay, so here's the problem. Every year there are enough antibiotics prescribed in the United States alone to cover 80% of the population, and antibiotics are intended for diseases of bacterial origin.

However, at least 75% of adults in the U.S. seeking treatment for a Bacterial infection of acute bronchitis, which is caused by a virus again, are prescribed antibiotics. Here's the first thing you need to know. Antibiotics, antibacterials don't kill viruses. Okay? And today there are so many doctors breaking the Hippocratic oath of first do no harm.

There's so many doctors today who lack wisdom and knowledge and integrity because they are prescribing Antibiotics for viruses. And the other important thing to note is you actually weaken the immune system every time you do that, and you do damage to the immune system, to the lungs, to the cells, and cause someone to age more quickly, deplete their body of nutrients.

Every time a doctor prescribes an antibiotic for a viral, viral infection— if you ever go into a doctor and you think you have a virus, but they prescribe you an antibiotic, I would question them and say, hey, isn't this a virus? How would an antibiotic help? Here's what happens. They typically don't have a good answer. Now listen to some of this data because this will blow your mind.

According to the CDC, by the way, again, these are— this is from the Center for Disease Control. This isn't from a blogger. This is from the CDC. Approximately 50% of antibiotic prescriptions written in outpatient settings are inappropriate. Did you hear that? The CDC says 50% of antibiotic prescriptions today are inappropriate.

And according to other physicians, they believe up to 70 to 90% of the time patients are incorrectly prescribed antibiotics for common colds and infections, specifically viral infections.

And the Infectious Disease Society of America states this, listen to this, that when someone goes into their doctor with a runny nose, cough, Sore throat, watery eyes, any of those common cold conditions, 98% of the time they have a viral infection. Think about that. So doctors today are prescribing— nearly every time you go in there, they're prescribing an antibiotic.

Yet 90, 98% of the time it's actually a viral infection, which then will do your body more harm than good because it's not actually going to kill the virus. Listen to some of these stats around COVID-19. Only 8% of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 had co-infections, which were both viral and bacterial, that required antibiotics. So only 8%.

Yet 75% of COVID-19 patients were treated with antibiotics Just in case, quote unquote, they helped according to the World Health Organization. You can see the link here to all the studies in the show notes from the World Health Organization, from the CDC, and from all of the other medical citations I have on the PubMed database. But think about that. 75% Of them were prescribed an antibiotic.

Only 8% had a bacterial coinfection. So 68% of those people had damage done to their bodies by the antibiotics, which harm Their gut health and their immune health. And so what's happening today, again, is not right. And so you need to act as your own doctor. You need to know this for yourself and help share this with other people, because we will save lives by sharing this.

We will save, uh, you know, we'll save a lot of money by doing this. Again, I want to hit on this point again. While antibiotics are effective at killing bacteria, More than 90% of respiratory infections are viral. Antibiotics are useless against viral infections. Let me give you an example of bacterial infections versus virus.

If you come down with actually strep throat and you show up positive on a strep test, well, then you have a bacterial infection. Many times pneumonia, not always, but sometimes it can be viral or bacteria. Sometimes pneumonia can be bacterial. Urinary tract infections. Lyme disease and infections like C. diff are all examples of bacterial infections.

Viral infections include anytime you'd have the common cold, the flu, chickenpox, ear infections, measles, and COVID. Those are all viral infections. And if you're prescribed anytime for COVID, common cold, flu, ear infection, a antibacteria, typically it's not going to work. It's not going to work because it's a virus when you're taking an antibiotic. So just think about these stats in general.

90-Plus percent of the time it's viral, yet almost every time you go into your doctor, they're prescribing an antibiotic. Now, part of this has to do with our culture of immediate gratification. Here's the reality. Society expects quick fixes similar to services like Amazon, Netflix, Uber, or DoorDash.

You know, during flu season, people look for quick fixes for symptoms like stuffy noses, coughs, and sore throats. And sometimes people even go into their doctors demanding they be given something. So doctors just give them an antibiotic. But antibiotic— antibiotics are often incorrectly assumed to be the solution. And the good news is, I'll get here in a little bit, there are antiviral herbs.

And foods and practices that will actually help your body to a much greater degree without the side effects. Now, here's one of the biggest side effects today of us overprescribing all of these antibiotics. It's antimicrobial-resistant infections like MRSA. Did you know that at least 700,000 people a year die from antimicrobial-resistant infections.

So because today we've overprescribed antibiotics, bacteria has become resistant to our conventional antibiotics today. And so these new strains of bacteria that are antibiotic-resistant are now killing people. At least 700,000 patients a year, could be a million. And by 2050, they're projected to cause 10 million deaths per year at a cumulative global cost of $100 trillion.

50% Of antibiotics given worldwide. Here's, here's another shocking thing. Okay. Now, you might say to yourself, well, you know what? I haven't taken an antibiotic in years. Okay. Well, here's the problem. 50% Of the entire world's antibiotics are given to livestock, typically cows, pigs, sheep. But in the United States, 80% of the antibiotics are given to livestock.

And I believe the United States ranks in the top 3 countries, if not number 1, where the most antibiotics are prescribed. And here's what's happening because of all of these antibiotics are given to livestock like our cows and our sheep and pigs.

We are now finding— actually, we have for years— antibiotic residue is found in the meat we eat, in the milk we drink, and other forms of dairy such as cheese and butter. We're finding loads and loads of antibiotics in there. And so think about this. If you're just drinking conventional milk, or you did as a kid, you're getting doses, daily doses of antibiotics. So you're not getting one dose.

You might have a dose once a day, twice a day, 365 days a year for 10 to 20 to 30 years. So it's no wonder why so many people are sick, why autoimmune diseases are on the rise, or why so many people have immunodeficiencies.

Why so many people aren't— have digestive issues is because we've had so many antibiotics enter our system via conventional medications, meat, dairy, not to mention, you know, glyphosate and some of those other, you know, Roundup and those other chemicals that act as antibiotics. They're even on our food produce. We live in a society today that we are bombarded with antibiotics constantly.

And COVID made all of this worse. People started lathering up their entire hands and arms with with antibacterial gel and hand soaps, which then also enter via the skin or, uh, or other areas of your body, you, you have more antibiotics entering your system.

So the reality is today we have less good bacteria and we've harmed our bodies more with antibiotics than any time in the history of the world. Now I want to go through in a recent study that discovered all of the different types of antibiotics that are found in our meat dairy supply today, our meat and dairy supply. So by the way, this is any time. Now here's the sad thing.

Most of the time, if you buy dairy that's organic or you go to a local farmer from your farmer's market that you know is doing the right things, most of the time there will not be any antibiotic— there won't be antibiotics in those forms of meat and dairy. However, sometimes there still are.

In fact, one of the largest dairy companies recently, they found that, for instance, even if you're going to, you know, a health food store and you're buying your dairy, even in some of the organic brands, they were finding some of these antibiotics, uh, in there as well. Now at lower levels. So again, we're still getting it even in organic food, but much less.

So here are some of the antibiotics found in our meat and dairy supply today. One is called tetracycline, and this causes gastrointestinal disturbances such as diarrhea. And basically this also leads to bacterial resistance Penicillin, of course, is another big one. And this can cause people to have food sensitivities and food allergies over time. It causes allergic reactions, food sensitivities.

So that's another thing that happens. You may wonder, well, why do I have all these food sensitivities? Or why do my kids have all these food sensitivities? Well, oftentimes it's because you've been or they've been exposed to antibiotics, maybe not even as a medication, but via their food supply.

Um, sulfonamides— these are sulfa drugs, and they can cause allergic reactions as well, blood disorders like anemia. And so this is another one: if you're anemic or having blood issues, some of this can be caused by the antibiotics in your food supply.

Fluoroquinolones— these are— these cause inflammation of your tendons, can increase your risk of tendonitis, such as Tennis elbow, golfing issues, knee pain, back pain has been linked with this specific antibiotic as well, along with digestive disturbances. Macrolides, these are other antibiotics that actually have been linked to antibiotic resistance and damage good bacteria in the gut.

Aminoglycosides, these are antibiotics that have been shown to damage the kidneys and cause bacterial resistance and superinfections. And then cephalosporins. These also are linked to food sensitivities, allergic reactions, and also disrupt the gut microbiota. So here's the reality: there are numerous antibiotics that are found in our meat and dairy supply today.

Now here's some good news about our conventional medical system. There are more and more doctors waking up to this, even the CDC and World Health Organization, because they see what's coming with all of these antibiotic-resistant strains like MRSA that are continuing to grow. As we mentioned earlier, going from 700,000 to a projected 10 million cases by the year 2050.

Now here's what some medical facilities are now doing. They are having physicians explain their reasoning for their antibiotic prescriptions. And when they did this in a study, it resulted in a decrease from 23.2% to 5 75.2% in prescription rates. Think about this, cut down by more than 75%. You know, right when, when doctors had to tell, you know, explain why they were prescribing this.

This is why I mentioned if you go into your doctor and they prescribe an antibiotic and you think you have a virus and you ask them, well, would that actually work? Because isn't this a viral infection? If they stop and actually think and use wisdom them, they might say, well, oh, you're right, let's not prescribe that.

But doctors today are just in the habit of you come in, just write an antibiotic and send you out the door like you're, like, you're, like, you're cattle, like you're an animal, you know, like the, you know, 80% of the antibiotics given in the United States say you're just, you're, you're, you're an animal. I'm going to write you this prescription, just send you out the door.

They're herding you like cattle. That's what it's like today. Now, this study is really fascinating. Here, here's, here's what they did. They did something called peer comparison in the study. They compared physicians to top performers. So for instance, they took your average physician and they looked at the top performing physicians, the best of the best, that top 1%.

And here's what happened when comparing physicians to the top performers. They reduced inappropriate prescribing by 81%.

So the top doctors, the ones that are known in their field as being the best of the best, someone like if you're thinking about Dr. Mark Hyman or Peter Attia, you know, some of these doctors you might be familiar with that are medical doctors who have written these prescription Maybe at some point in their life, those doctors, the top one percent, they're smart enough.

They have the wisdom instead to recommend vitamins, supplements, or only if it's needed in emergency cases, an antibiotic if it's a really serious case. And so they found that when they were able to compare themselves to the top performers, it reduced inappropriate prescribing by 81%.

So this does two things: one, it exposes all of the antibiotics that shouldn't be prescribed, and it also shows that this is why if you by the way if If you are not well, okay, if you're sick with everything from a common cold to cancer to autoimmune disease to rheumatoid arthritis to hypothyroidism to Lyme disease, whatever you're struggling with, you need to find a great doctor.

Go and seek out the top 1%. Go and find somebody that practices the way that you want to be treated. For most of you watching this, you want a functional medicine doctor. An integrative medical doctor, or a you know somebody that practices more ancient forms of medicine like Chinese medicine. Like you you want somebody with integrity, somebody with values, Judeo-Christian values.

Oftentimes you want somebody who is going to operate with character and is in the top one percent of wisdom when it comes to these things. So again, I just want to say I have this happen often where. Yeah. People will say they, they live with this sort of victim mentality, like, well, my doctor told me to do it, there's nothing I could do about it. Well, my answer is find a different doctor.

If you have a doctor that's just simply prescribing antibiotic for you, or you're on a thyroid medication, or you're on some sort of drug, and your doctor isn't working via diet and supplementation and lifestyle, doing everything they can in order to help you reduce it or get off it or do things that are naturally for your long-term benefit, Yeah. Then you don't have the right doctor.

So you want to go out and seek out a doctor that can help you. It's so worth it. Even if you're going to spend, you know, let's say thousands of dollars on, on, on functional medicine doctors over the next few years, whatever, whatever it might be, long term you will save money because it's going to extend your lifespan. You'll pay less for insurance. It'll be better for your kids' health.

I mean, you're paying for quality of life there. So my point here is, is Invest in finding a good doctor, the top 1% in your area locally, or go and find somebody virtually. But just find a good doctor because the reality is it's like anything. There are, when it comes to your health, it's one of the most important things in your life.

You want to make sure you are investing in finding great doctors. Now listen, I believe this is true for every area of life. If you're getting counseling, marriage counseling, go and find the best of the best, great marriage counselors.

If you are able to send your kids to a better school, if you're able to hang out with people that have greater virtue, if you're able to find a better mentor, any of those, you always want to go and seek out the top 1% and model and do what they do. You don't want average results, you want great results. For average, you do what everyone else is doing.

You take antibiotics, you get side effects, you get chronic disease, If you want great results, well, then you do what the top 1% do, which is help you with food, food as medicine, lifestyle medicine, and mindset medicine to help you heal. Here's the other reality when it comes to antibiotics.

So I wanna get back to this and I wanna go through my natural protocol for protecting yourself if you ever have to be on an antibiotic and the natural antibiotics out there today. Here's the reality. Every time you use an antibiotic, You damage your gut microbiome and you weaken your immune system. Your immune system needs to fight its own fight.

So if you have a virus, you come down with a virus, everything from COVID to the common flu or common cold, whatever it is, or your kid has an ear infection and you have a virus and your body beats off, beats that virus, it's now stronger because it fought it off. It's like lifting weights. Your body was lifting very heavy weights and now Okay, it's done.

It got really worn out, but now a few days later, it's stronger and better able to deal with future infections. If you go and take a medication like an antibiotic, what you do is you then kill off some of the things that are part of your immune system. So now you're weaker in the future when it has to fight a different type of infection. You weaken your body.

So you want to, if at all possible, Just do things to support your body as it fights off a virus. So for instance, you know, medications will go and fight it for you. Vitamins will strengthen your own body so your own body and innate immune system is better able to fight the infection itself.

Here's the other important fact: 70% of your immune system lives in your gut, and taking an antibiotic is like dropping an atomic bomb on the hundreds of trillions of bacteria and microbes that live in your gut microbiome.

And I've seen so many patients over the years, because they took an antibiotic drug, it led to issues like chronic allergies, food sensitivities, autoimmune disease, uh, you know, having issues related to coming down with colds and flus either easier in the future, major digestive issues, inflammatory bowel disease, poor nutrient absorption.

All of those are side effects when you damage your digestive system from taking an antibiotic drug. And the good news is there's all-natural things you can do.

Now, I want to go through if you've taken antibiotic, okay, and this could be taking one antibiotic or 2 or 3 or 5 or 10 over time, but I want to go through some studies that really have correlations between taking an antibiotic and the disease risk you have. The first one I want to talk about here is the association between antibiotic intake and cancer risk.

This was evaluated among 7 million 947,270 participants across 25 studies, which found antibiotic use increases cancer risk by 18%. Okay, so if you're taking antibiotic, you're increasing your cancer risk by 18%. Specific cancers: lung cancer increased by 29%, lymphoma 31%, pancreatic cancer 28%, renal carcinoma 28%, and multiple myeloma 36%.

Again, this was a study done on nearly 8 million people, highly credible. Another example of a study was done on 121,000 women who used antibiotics for around 2 months between the ages of total, but for, for a 20-year period of time. They had a 36% increased risk total of colorectal cancer. So, so think about this. That's just 2+ months total.

So if it's about 2 months, that's taking a week's worth of antibiotics 8 times over a 20-year period. So not even every year, about, you know, a little less than every other year, um, somebody taking it, 36% increased risk in colorectal cancer. And also, as I mentioned, um, the overall risk of colorectal cancer.

Now, the other thing that puts you at risk of when you take antibiotics is type 2 diabetes. There is a A 53% increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes with exposure to antibiotics, with a comparison of taking 5 prescriptions versus 0 to 1.

So if over a pretty long period of time you've taken 5 total prescription antibiotics over many years, or you've taken none or just 1 time, you've got a 53% increase in developing type 2 diabetes in the antibiotic group. Here are some other conditions that antibiotics increase your risk of. You have a 60% increased risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis if you've taken an antibiotic.

Inflammatory bowel disease, a 50% higher risk of— that's Crohn's, colitis, and inflammatory bowel disease. Type 1 diabetes in children, a 40% increased risk. And the other thing that happens is when you take antibiotic drugs, you also have vitamin deficiencies. It's called antibiotic-induced vitamin deficiencies.

One of the biggest ones is folate, known known as B9, and this is important for methylation and your— for your body to produce red blood cells, DNA replication, cellular repair. Um, folate can be synthesized anew by Bifidobacterium, but if you take an antibiotic, now your body can't create many of these B vitamins. So now you're deficient.

So both you can't absorb it, but also your body also doesn't manufacture. And you may not have known that, but did you know the good bacteria in your gut, probiotics, they actually create— nutrients and vitamins if you've got a healthy gut microbiome. So not only can you eat folate and B vitamins, but your body can create some on their own. Well, that's damaged when you take antibiotics.

Vitamin B2, known as riboflavin, are damaged when you take antibiotics. Also calcium, magnesium, iron, and zinc all are affected when you take antibiotics. Now, here are some natural antibiotics and research associated with each of these. The first one is oregano oil.

Researchers have found that oregano oil, particularly its active component carvacrol, is highly effective against bacterial infections. One study highlighted its potency against MRSA, showing similar effectiveness to conventional antibiotics, and it's— it doesn't cause someone to become antibiotic resistant.

Here's the other thing to know: So when you take oil of oregano or oregano oil versus a conventional antibiotic, oil of oregano is much more gentle on your system and it works more naturally with your body, and you're not going to have the long-term side effects. Now, I will say this, oil of oregano is a form of medicine. It's strong, so you could take enough of it to damage your body.

So this isn't something you want to take on a regular basis. It's not something you'd want to take typically for more than couple weeks. But again, it's a powerful natural antibiotic. Also, this was used in the treatment of something called SIBO, that's small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. And patients who did herbal therapy with oil of oregano had a 46% negative follow-up.

So again, people with SIBO, when they did oil of oregano, eliminated their— it's called the lactulose breath test— they eliminated SIBO in 46% of cases. Whereas patients who use an actual medication called rifaximin only had a 34% improvement. So the actual oil of oregano group— oil of oregano outperformed a conventional medication in its effectiveness at killing bacteria.

Another natural antibiotic is garlic. Garlic is a broad-spectrum antibacterial and an antiviral. It's been shown to be effective against E. coli. Coli and Staphylococcus aureus as well. Manuka honey and propolis are 2 others. These have been shown to be effective against MRSA. Uh, in fact, using manuka honey eradicated, uh, MRSA in 70% of patients treated in a hospital. 70%.

In one study also— so I want to mention these honey products because honey has been used a form of medicine for years, but manuka has the most antibacterial properties for honey. And then the component found in honey, propolis, has the most antibacterial properties there.

In one study, the use of propolis resulted in a notable reduction in bacterial load in infected wounds, showing up to a 50% improvement in healing times compared to the control group. So people healed and fought infections much faster. When they were using propolis. A few others I want to mention too: goldenseal, olive leaf, Andrographis, sage, ginger, Pau d'Arco, clove, horseradish, elderberry.

All have been shown to have antibacterial properties in clinical studies. Now, the first few I mentioned, there are human studies or animal studies. Some of these, when you look at the studies, more of them are on these bacterial strains in Petri dishes. That all of that alone, these herbs have all been used to fight bacterial and viral infections for thousands of years in Chinese medicine.

You know, the Bible references using these, some of these as essential oils like, like cassia and cinnamon and myrrh that all have these antiviral properties. And so there are many, many benefits throughout history of using this to fight bacterial infections. I also want to say that Or, you know, colloidal silver has been shown to decrease biofilm biomass from Staphylococcus in sheep.

So in animal studies, colloidal silver has been shown to be an effective natural antibiotic. Now, I know there are some scares and people worry about turning blue if you consume colloidal silver. By the way, in that, in those few cases that have ever happened, people were drinking it by the— I'm not overexaggerating— liters of it. I mean, drinking it.

So, so really, if you just stick to the dose, or even, you know, a teaspoon a few times a day of colloidal silver, that's well within the range of safe and effective. And it is a natural antibiotic. Another really powerful natural antibiotic, and it also acts as a natural parasite, natural anti-mold fighter and yeast fighter, is ozone, known as O3.

It's effective at treating, again, viral diseases, disinfected wounds, and more. And it disrupts bacterial cell envelopes and viral capsids. And so it helps break down the cell walls of bacteria so other viruses and things in your body can help kill them all of the way. You know, I personally used ozone to help treat my disc when I had an infection in my disc.

I actually had a doctor go into my disc and inject ozone into my disc. And I also did an ozone IV. When I've worked with patients with mold and Lyme disease, I've had them do IVs of ozone and seen amazing results with that.

So if you're a person that has a bacterial infection or something like a Lyme or mold infection or Candida, ozone as a treatment by a, by a functional medicine doctor where you're getting an IV called EBOO or 10-pass, or, or there's other forms, can be very, very effective as well.

Now I want to show you another powerful antibiotic treatment that I personally used that helped me go from— remember this I had a doctor tell me I would likely have to be on antibiotics for around 90 days. That's 3 months total. That's a quarter of a year be on an antibiotic. I was able to cut that down to just 30 days or 1 month total. Now, here's how I did it.

I came across this study that was published in PubMed, and here's what it's called. It said Antibiotic and Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy in the Management of Postoperative Yeah. And so what they found was that if you get in a hyperbaric chamber, it acts as a natural antibiotic and actually makes antibiotics more effective because it drives them deeper into your tissues.

And so there was a study done on a total of 22 patients treated with a hyperbaric chamber. All patients were given a 4-week course of an antibiotic called vancomycin. And additionally, patients received hyperbaric oxygen therapy at 100% O2, that's oxygen, at a 2.4 ATA for 90 minutes twice a day. So you're getting in there twice a day at a really strong pressure.

And they did this initially for 5 consecutive days, and then additional treatment was done once a day for the next 25 days. So there's 30 days total. Then they went and followed up with this group 2 years later. The treatment modality allowed infection control and healing for all 22 patients with 0% recurrence rate.

They said, our preliminary results indicate that the length of time on antibiotic therapy can be shortened with the use of hyperbaric oxygen therapy as an adjunctive treatment. They said ESR rates that's, uh, in C-reactive protein— that's a level of inflammation— returned to normal within 8 to 30 days after treatment.

So what they found in the study was, is that you're able to greatly reduce the amount of time you're on an antibiotic with hyperbaric oxygen therapy via this study. There's other studies as well that I could have pulled here on the benefits of hyperbaric chamber and its ability to fight infection.

So one of the other things I'll share, one of the most important things I'll share before I get into my exact protocol, is that when you take an antibiotic, you want to make sure you're replacing the good bacteria. Antibiotics wipe out trillions— not billions, not millions— trillions of good bacteria in your gut, maybe even 100 trillion. I mean, it's at least tens of trillions.

And so you want to replace it with good bacteria. I want to go over some clinical research. By the way, here's something else that's amazing. Probiotics actually can act as antibiotics, especially certain strains like soil-based organisms. So even though they're called probiotics, some probiotics can kill off bad bacteria in your gut and kill off— help fight infections.

So I want to go through a few of these strains. One is called lactobacillus. Lactobacillus rhamnosus. This reduces diarrhea duration by 25 to 50%. I mentioned I did not have any diarrhea or loose stool, which most people would have after being on an antibiotic for an entire month because of all of the probiotics that I took. Um, another one, Saccharomyces boulardii, reduced acute diarrhea by 40%.

Another one, Bifidobacterium, uh, or, or Bifidobacteria bifidum, reduced associated diarrhea by 50%. Lactobacillus plantarum, which is found in things like sauerkraut, was associated with a 50% reduction in post-operative infections. Lactobacillus reuteri improves H. pylori bacteria by about 10 to 20%.

And Bifidobacterium lactis reduces respiratory infections— could be cold, flu, bronchitis— by 25%. Another one— now, these are soil-based organisms. Bacillus subtilis was shown to be effective at killing off E. coli and staph. It produced bacteriocins and lipopeptins, which basically broke down cell membranes, destroying bacteria.

And Bacillus coagulans produces lactic acid, which basically creates an environment in your gut that kills off bad bacteria.

And so one of, if not the single most important thing that all of you should walk away with and be in, in consider doing Uh, from this episode is taking a probiotic supplement and eating more probiotic-rich foods and consuming foods that feed the growth of probiotics in your body. If you've ever taken an antibiotic, you need to replace probiotics in your system.

And I see this so commonly where somebody will go and take an antibiotic and then they won't take a probiotic afterwards. It blows my mind that every single doctor isn't prescribing a probiotic To their patients after they take an antibiotic. You should always be on one.

Now, what I did when I had my infection was I would do my IV of antibiotics in the morning, and then at night I would do my probiotic supplements. So I would do them apart from each other, but I would do very, very high-dose probiotics. And right when I got off of it, I did around 1 trillion probiotics a day. You heard that right.

So you might say, well, I, you know, I take a probiotic that's 20 billion or 40, 50 billion, maybe even 100 billion units daily. Well, I was taking 1 trillion probiotic units daily. And what I did, because it was hard for me to get all of them, I took actually multiple brands. I took a soil-based probiotic, a fermented food probiotic, and a broad-spectrum probiotic.

Now, I do think the soil-based probiotics are the most important, the most powerful, have the most, uh, the strongest antibiotic properties. But again, I was taking close to a trillion a day. I recommend for people at least 400 to 500 billion probiotics daily after you get off a prescription antibiotic, or if you are trying to really heal your body in a tremendous way.

Another thing I took— so I took a probiotic that also had prebiotics and postbiotics in it. Okay, another thing I did is something called bacteriophages. These are proviruses that actually kill off bad bacteria. I also took turkey tail mushroom which has antibacterial and antiviral properties. I also did fiber. This was something that I wanted to protect my gut.

So right now, by the way, I'm going through this list right now of what you might consider doing if you've ever taken an antibiotic or you're in the midst of having to take an antibiotic. So number 1, you want to be taking probiotics. You want to take medicinal mushrooms, getting good fungi like turkey tail. Fiber, you know, good fiber.

Now you could take something like Sunny Psyllium Husk, or you could also be doing Uh, you know, something like flax or ground chia or hemp that's ground, but doing some good fiber is great. If you are struggling with loose stool or diarrhea, you can do a little bit of liquid bentonite clay, just a teaspoon of liquid. You can buy this online on Amazon, liquid bentonite clay.

I also recommend— now this is a big one— my number one is taking a probiotic. The second most important though is taking a methylated multivitamin or methylated B vitamins. When you are on an antibiotic, especially an IV, it damages your cells. So not just your gut. When you take an antibiotic, it actually damages your cells. And so you need to make sure you're getting plenty of B vitamins.

So you want to take a B complex supplement that has methylated nutrients in it, like methylcobalamin or methylfolate. So you want to take methylated vitamins. Also vitamin D. D, magnesium, and zinc. These are the nutrients that are most depleted when you take an antibiotic. I also took sometimes things to support my glutathione production.

But number one supplement you need to be taking if you've ever taken antibiotic is a probiotic supplement at a very high dose, probably anywhere from 400 billion to 1 trillion daily. Number 2, diet. You want to consume a diet that's good for your gut and naturally strengthens your immune Here's what I ate as part of my natural antibiotic protocol to heal my body.

I did a lot of bone broth, organ meat. I did, uh, wild organic meat such as wild salmon and grass-fed beef and chicken. I did coconut yogurt, so some fermented foods, cooked vegetables, fermented vegetables, blueberries, which have a lot of prebiotic fiber, sweet potatoes, who have— which have a lot of prebiotic fiber. Rice, congee, hummus, and miso.

Those are the foods I predominantly ate in order to heal. Also, in terms of my holistic treatments, I did hyperbaric oxygen therapy. I did vitamin IVs such as silver, ozone, methylene blue, and a Myers cocktail, which is vitamin C, B vitamins, and glutathione. I did a lot of time outdoors in the sun as much as possible. I did a lot of infrared sauna.

Raising your body temperature and heat actually helps your body kill off bad bacteria and viruses. I also did stem cell therapy via umbilical cord tissue. And so I actually had that injected into the areas, uh, including my bloodstream. I did an IV also into my disc and joints in order to heal.

And so you can see I did a lot to heal myself here, but I want to just go through— here's some takeaways from the episode. Okay. Number So 1, I did not do anything wrong. Number one, there are so many antibiotics that are prescribed today that shouldn't be prescribed in the first place. If you have a viral infection, an antibiotic will not fix it.

The reality is there are a lot of natural antibiotics like oil of oregano, garlic, and a lot of the therapies we talked about that have antibiotic properties that you want to do those, uh, first and foremost. In addition, remember, a lot of the antibiotics we're exposed to aren't via prescription antibiotics. They're hand sanitizers. They're Yeah.

The meat and dairy we eat, if they're non-organic especially. So we're bombarded and we need to constantly be building up our gut health. Probiotics in our food, getting a lot of good fiber via vegetables and fruits and other superfoods is helpful. And again, you don't just want prebiotic— probiotics, you want prebiotics and postbiotics as well at a high dosage.

And again, there are also a lot of natural therapies that can help us heal as well. Hey, let me know in the comments section if you've ever, uh, what your thoughts are on this episode. If you've ever experienced the side effects of antibiotics, or someone you love have seen the damage that they can do. If you yourself are really conscious of this and the overprescription of antibiotics today.

And if you've ever used any natural antibiotics, everything from Manuka honey to oil of oregano to a hyperbaric chamber to an infrared sauna. Let me know in the comment section.

And by the way, if you know somebody who has taken an antibiotic or has digestive issues or autoimmune disease and they're suffering, remember, a lot of autoimmune disease and gut issues and food sensitivities are due to not having a healthy gut microbiome, which have been damaged by antibiotics in the past. But now they can— you can really start regenerating and creating a new gut.

Here's the good news. Even if, even if you you've— even if your gut has been destroyed in the past, you can rebuild it. You can repair your cells. You can repair your gut lining. You can repair your immune system using food as medicine and natural treatments.

So if you know someone who needs to hear this information, hey, please share it on your Instagram, share it on your Facebook, uh, you know, text it to people that need to hear. Be on mission with me. More people need to know the truth about antibiotics, the lies we've been told, And what we can do in order to take control of our health, our immune system, and start to heal naturally.

Hey, thanks so much for tuning in here to the Dr. Josh Axe Show. Remember, each and every week I explore how to grow in health and body, mind, spirit, and take your health and life to the next level. Hey, make sure to subscribe, like, and share this. I can't wait to see you on the next episode.