Toil
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Reintroduction of non drug resistant bacteria

I just was listening on NPR, and the expert guy was saying that reintroducing non drug resistant strains essentially reverses the damage caused by excessive antibiotic use, because other than drug resistance, there is no additional competitive advantage. In fact, scientists have figured out that in order to become drug resistant, a bacterium has to give up something else. Take away the drug, and they can't compete.

I was wondering if the permaculture crowd is into this when reclaiming poisoned land.

DoubleDogFarm
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That's interesting Toil.

I keep thinking that kids these days have many more problems because of antibiotics. Weak immune system. Handy wipes, antibacterial soap and such. When we were kids, we played in the dirt, stuck our fingers in our mouth. If we dropped something we were eating, 10 second rule, and finish it. :shock: Mothers these days, don't touch that, wash your hands. They wipe the whole house down with chemicals.

Antibiotics and pesticides are alot a like. The more we use, the more potent they need to be. The germs, insects build up a resistance or mutate.

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Lesli
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I have just bought ( although not read yet ) this book called Herbal Antibiotics, Natural Alternatives for Treating Drug-resistant Bacteria by Stephen Harrod Buhner.
On the back it says, ...¨The era of the penicillin miracle is over.Through our indiscriminate use of pharmaceutical antibiotics in hospitals and factory farms, humans have created `Superbugs´ - tenacious and virulent bacteria that develop resistance to solitary antibiotic compounds at an alarming speed.
In this empowering book, Stephen Buhner offers conclusive evidence that plant medicines, with their complex mix of multiple antibiotic compounds, are remarkably effective against drug-resistant bacteria. Youll learn how antibiotic herbs such s aloe, garlic and grapefruit seed extract represent our best defense against bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus, E coli and Salmonella- and how their use will ensure that, in the future, antibiotic drugs will still be there when we really need them....¨

Our family doctor for more than 40 years was a Scientific Naturopath whose natural medicines and diagnosis´ were always effective. Now, without him, I´m slightly preoccupied about having to rely on allopathic medicine in which I have very little confidence and I´m convinced that a healthy immune system which can be obtained via the information in this sort of book and a healthy diet, raw as much as possible, based on organic, untampered with produce is the way to go.

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rainbowgardener
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It vaguely meshes with something I recently learned, which is if you are using pesticide sprays (and that would likely even include things like Bt), it's important to leave a few sacrifice plants unsprayed. Helps keep the target population of insects from developing resistance to the spray. If there's a place where non-resistant individuals can safely hang out, that mostly eliminates the competitive advantage of the resistance and the population as a whole, though reduced does not develop resistance.

So I would think the reintroduction of non-resistant bacteria would only work if we stop the over use of antibiotics that created the resistant ones in the first place and leave some safe spaces for them.

Toil
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well it's interesting rainbow, the resistance apparently does not just lessen, it goes away completely. You do in fact have to remove the antibiotic from the mix, or resistance becomes once again advantageous.

but then the good news, is that the antibiotic will once again do the trick once the population has returned to normal. That's the part that was so surprising. It's almost like we can have a do-over.

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Lifestyle Lift Journey
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This thread reminds me how cockroaches survive. They are good at changing their bodies to be resistant to cockroach spray. I've heard scientists have to create new formula of spray each year to kill them. We, humans apparently stopped changing our bodies to adapt to our changing environment such as diseases and climates. Instead, we are apparently taking an option of changing our environment to adapt us. I don't have the power to change the world, but I can do small things around me, like gardening with permaculture concept in mind. It might be a small step, but it's still a step to delay the scary future we might have.



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