An inspiring day at the Chelsea Physic Gardens on Monday discussing the research in Anti Microbial resistance and what herbs can be used instead of antibiotics and the mechanism by which this is done ..
A wonderful collection of research professors from University of Southhampton and Portsmouth. A few GPs working also as herbalists and a lovely collection of RCHM members imparting their wisdom and adding input from the floor!
A useful day for my patients as what was gleaned is that should your GP recommend antibiotics ask first how necessary it is and it might be better to save the antibiotics for possible MRSA or some other life threatening infection. The more exposure to antibiotics you have the more you educate the bacteria how to adapt to them. At the same time you diminish your own natural immune activity. In Scandinavian countries they have introduced doing a CRP test (finger blood test ) before administering antibiotics and this has reduced the usage by about a third. The recent government report has shown there is a big reduction in prescribing but we have still a way to go to use these life saving drugs for just this … feeling horrible with a rotten cold is just that, best advice is to take self to bed and hide. But in the real world where we all have to work to keep the machine of living day to day it is not possible. Hence the over use of the medication which began saving lives about 90 years ago.
Think twice before taking them as you may need it one day to actually save your life.