Worried About Long Term AP?

Many of us on the road back to health and vitality have been asked this question. In a time when we are bombarded with media warnings about antibiotics causing mutant, irrepressible strains of germs, we may be left fumbling for explanations so that the uninformed inquisitor "gets it." The forecast threat of future plagues has hit the big screen and books on the subject abound. Based on the reactions of some people, you would think that we who are on AP (antibiotic protocol) are personally responsible for the projected devastation. Then-- what do we tell those who ask?

We can assure them that the tetracycline family of antibiotics administered for AP is unlikely to promote drug resistant forms of "superbug." That is because these agents do not attack the offending organism where resistance generally occurs-- related to the cell wall of the microbe.

We could remind them that teens with acne are put on this family of medications for extended periods of time. Treating acne this way has not resulted in a microbial plague.

We can inform them that the rheumatic diseases were considered by some to have an infectious cause years before it was proposed that their treatment needed another approach-- one which simply suppressed symptoms. It was this other approach, based on a model of autoimmunity, that has failed dismally for many of us. No, we on AP do not think our body is "fighting itself" as some of us were told. That is not why we became ill. Our immune system does not have to be systematically suppressed or destroyed to treat our disease. We can tell the inquirer that the medications we were taking before AP did not work for us and we remained sick, or even became worse. In some instances, entirely new conditions were, themselves, caused by the drugs we were given. We can add that treating our disease as an infection is addressing a cause of the illness and not just the symptoms If the querier takes a few steps back from us at that news, fearful of catching something, we can inform them that these microbes are abundant in our environment. However, it appears that we who are ill are particularly sensitive to this group of organisms. We should remind the questioner that they are obviously one of the lucky ones who can handle these microbes without adverse reactions.

To help place any risks in perspective from a societal point of view, we can point out the following: many who continue on the low dose AP eventually feel better and significant numbers go into remission. Talk about an impact on society! When millions of us who have been too debilitated to work are put back into action-it would surely be a greater asset to society than our being sick and suffering. You can add that this therapy is quite inexpensive compared to many other current options. Perhaps society's economic burden resulting from the rheumatic diseases could be greatly reduced if more patients were treated with these protocols and large numbers of chronically ill individuals were to regain their health. Lastly, one could describe the treatment options we previously had been given, the pharmaceutical hierarchy that might be in store for us if our disease progressed. Or, perhaps we are already well up on that pharmaceutical ladder and we could recount for them the drugs we are presently receiving. It is our goal to reduce or eliminate the more toxic medications once AP has "kicked in." We could ask them whether a class of drugs that has been around for over 50 years looks more intimidating than the newer, costlier "heavy hitters" many of us have been offered. Then, ask them what they would do if they were sick, in debilitating pain and needed to take antibiotic therapy for relief or to effectively manage and possibly reverse a potentially fatal illness. Hopefully, at that point, the questioner will be convinced that we are not walking time bombs. If after all that, they still do not "get it," one could change the topic and talk about the weather.