How to Prevent and Reduce the Symptoms of Bacterial Infections

Infections are either viral or bacterial. To generalize, viral infections are prevented by your lymphatic, or immune system, and preventing bacterial infections is the responsibility of the bacteria in your bowel. (Learn more about viral infections by reading my previous post.)

Sinus infections, some cases of the flu, staph, pneumonia, bronchitis, strep throat, fungal infections, most cases of diarrhea that last more than three days, and e-coli are examples of bacterial infections.

A healthy bowel eliminates bacterial infections. The good bacteria in your bowel are your “army” that kills off these invaders.

Crutches for infections

Until your bowel and body are healthier, the following crutches can help prevent infections, and they can help you feel better faster if you become ill. Take these as directed on the label, doubling the recommended dose for a few days for best results. These cannot make you feel worse. They also have zero possibility of weakening your immune system, interfering with “immune-suppressant” drugs if you are taking them, or of making you “addicted” to them.

Crutches for bacterial infections include colloidal silver and goldenseal. Bowel Strength contains goldenseal and can be helpful in preventing these infections, but it is possible that you will need something more powerful at times. (Acidophilus does not contain goldenseal, so if you are using this to heal your bowel, you will need to use these crutches too.) Goldenseal can be purchased at any health food store, but not all stores carry colloidal silver. It can be ordered online. High quality silver can be purchased from “Purest Colloidals” at 609.267.2112, www.purestcollidals.com.

Colloidal silver has natural antibiotic properties and is generally stronger than goldenseal, and is preferable to use as a crutch for bacterial infections. Recently, a magazine article appeared, as well as coverage on Oprah and the Today show, about a man who turned blue using colloidal silver. This created some unfortunate, unnecessary concern about using this product. The man who turned blue has been taking colloidal silver daily for many years, and has even applied it directly to his skin. If this man healed his bowel, he would not need to use a natural antibiotic for many years. He needs to do this program! Even still, it is impressive that he wasn’t harmed by this extremely large dosage of silver that he has taken. If anything, his story confirms the safety of this product.

You will not turn blue, because you are healing your bowel, and therefore you won’t need to use very much of this product. Unlike him, you won't need a crutch, like silver, forever!

Take 2 teaspoons of silver a day, or 4 teaspoons if you do not feel better and/or your stools do not firm up by the next day. If you have a bacterial infection, this product should help you within the first two days of taking it. If not, consider that you either do not have a bacterial infection, or that it is bad enough to necessitate the use of a medical antibiotic. Bacterial infections can be much more serious than viral ones and much more difficult to treat naturally. If these crutches do not work for you soon, or you are very ill, go to your doctor and get antibiotics. Don’t take chances with bacterial infections, especially if you have frequently vomiting or frequent diarrhea. This is very dehydrating, and very dangerous. Keep in mind; it is not one round of antibiotics that made your bowel unhealthy. One round of antibiotics is not going to prevent you from healing it, either! Re-read pages 195-196 in “This Works, Crutches Don’t” for a greater explanation of this.

When you are sick, use the right crutch. Taking zinc, which was recommended for viral infections in my last post, for a bacterial infection, or goldenseal for a viral one, is not going to help you. If you are uncertain as to whether your infection is a viral or bacterial one, use crutches for both. It will not hurt you to take one that you don’t need. More commonly, I see clients who are taking a crutch for a viral infection when they have a bacterial infection, and not getting better because of it.

If you are getting bacterial infections often, or are very bothered by them, consider healing your bowel faster. I can assist you with this process, if desired.

Flu Season--Vaccines and Symptom Reduction

Should I get a flu, or swine flu, vaccine?

It’s the time of year when this question is a frequent one from my clients, and you may be surprised to read that my response is not an overwhelming “no.” Here is some food for thought, and an exploration of the pros and cons of these vaccines:

Pros: They might prevent you from getting the flu, and therefore you might avoid some days of discomfort. It may help ease your anxiety and fears of getting sick, or of dying from the flu, and the elimination of fear is the #1 ingredient needed for success with this program. In this case, go for it.

Cons: An unhealthy body kills you, not the flu (I suspect that the relatively few who die from it would have died from something else—cancer, heart attack, etc., soon anyway. Note: this is my educated guess.). Vaccines give you false sense of security that your immune system is healthier than it really is. They are a crutch and like all crutches, they do not heal you. Or make you healthier. There are dangers to vaccines as there are to all drugs, as they are all toxic and acidic (but the dangers of vaccines are also over-rated. Damage from mercury, etc. can only occur if you are already very vulnerable/unhealthy to begin with. See page 95 in “This Works, Crutches Don’t” for this discussion.) Finally, if you get the vaccine, you may still get the flu.

Personally, my kids and myself have never, and never will, get a flu vaccine. But if you do, it will not prevent you from healing your bowel and body.

How can I protect myself from the flu, and what can I do if I get sick to recover faster?

First and foremost, it is important that you use the right crutch. Crutches treat symptoms and can help you feel better faster. (Remember, Bowel Strength and acidophilus are not crutches. Taking more of them when you are sick, on the other hand, will not help you recover faster.)

The flu (and a cold) is a viral infection, and these are defended by your lymphatic system (which is located at the “bottom of your pipe.”) Great crutches for this system are Echinacea and zinc. Do not use vitamin C (as discussed on pages 278-279 of “This Works, Crutches Don’t.”) Take 100-150 mg of zinc per day or 30 drops of Echinacea extract, 5-6 times a day. These nutrients and herbs will stimulate your immune system to fight the virus. There is zero possibility of harm or discomfort from taking either of these. Bentonite is another fabulous crutch (and healing agent!) to use when you are sick, as it will “soak up” the acids in your blood and lymph that “feed” the virus. Flies (“germs”) are not attracted to a clean trashcan, only to a dirty, or acidic, one. So if your stools are looser or smaller than they should be, increase your bentonite by ¼ to ½ cup for a couple of days, too.

(Note: if you do not get better in a few days or have frequent diarrhea, you may have a bacterial infection, in which case these crutches are useless. Check back in a week or two for a discussion on bacterial infections and how best to treat, and prevent, these.)

And finally, if you are sick and this is discouraging to you, go back to “This Works, Crutches Don’t” and re-read the section titled “The problems with using symptoms to assess your health” on pages 40-41.

Probiotic/Acidophilus Misunderstandings

How does Bowel Strength strengthen the bacteria in my bowel if it contains no probiotics?

One of the most frequent questions I hear is, “How does the Bowel Strength work if it does not contain probiotics/acidophilus?” Perhaps a single day does not go by that I am not asked this question.

The reason for the confusion is that most of you have been led to believe that probiotics are live bacteria that march into your gut and set up camp. But this is not true:

Probiotics like acidophilius are not live bacteria.

Probiotics produce an acid by-product in your bowel that helps the good bacteria that are there grow and multiply. The berberine and grapefruit seed extract in the Bowel Strength DO THE SAME THING. I have explained this in my book—see pages 167-169 in "This Works, Crutches Don't"—yet I still get tons of questions about this, implying that these misunderstandings are strongly rooted (and that I should have spent more time explaining this in my book!)

So I will provide another analogy for you, in my never-ending attempt to set you on the right road. (I suspect that I will STILL get many questions about how the Bowel Strength can work if it has no probiotics in it, and all I can do is keep trying to “undo” your current way of thinking…)

If you had no money, you would die (of starvation etc). Likewise, if you had no healthy bacteria in your bowel, you would die, too. If you had $4000 in the bank, you would want it to grow and multiply. To do so, you could invest this money in real estate, gold, a money market fund, a CD, etc. These are all different investment vehicles, but they all help your money grow and multiply (well, in the good ole days, but you get the point!). Likewise, there are many “investment vehicles” for your good bacteria, as well. One of them is probiotics. Another is grapefruit seed extract. Another is berberine (these last two are in Bowel Strength). There is not one way to help your money grow, and there is not just one way to help your good bacteria grow and multiply, either. The majority of the clients that I have seen who have rebuilt the bacterial environment in their bowels have never taken acidophilus; they have done this exclusively with Bowel Strength.

Probiotics—No refrigeration required?

Likewise, for at least two decades, most probiotics have been stored in the refrigerator, and the accepted thinking was that these “live organisms” would die if not kept cold. “Travel acidophilus,” which did not require refrigeration, was always considered far inferior. Likely, a number of bottles of acidophilus, and hard-earned money, has been “thrown down the drain” by those who accidentally left their acidophilus out of the fridge for too long. And how many of you have neglected to take your acidophilus because of the need for refrigeration? You either forget it, or find it is too inconvenient to travel with it that way.

So I was a bit shocked, and even upset, to receive a recent report from the manufacturer of the line of probiotics I carry (from a very large lab that specializes in these products) that found that after many months at 75 degrees—or a tad above room temperature—the strength of these probiotics was still in tact. Wow. Why hasn’t this been done before? I have been ordering these products for 16 years and have never seen a similar experiment. Why are I, and you, paying to have these packed in ice, if this is not needed?

Most of all, the greatest relevance of this information is the fact that it changes your perspective on these products. Maybe the companies who sell these like your accepted perspective—that this is a live bacteria marching into your gut and setting up camp? That wrong idea probably sells a lot of these. It is profitable for the makers of them.

So if you are taking probiotics like acidophilus, do not store them in the sunlight or in a room that is above 75 degrees, and if you still feel insecure about this test, keep them refrigerated. But do not throw them out if they get left out and you MUST stop thinking of this product as live bacteria. It does nothing by hurt your chance of success in healing your bowel! (Gee, if I am taking 400 billion LIVE organisms a day, it should take only a few months to rebuild my bowel…could be your dangerous assumption as a result.)

Do I take these on an empty stomach or not?

If you read many different bottles of acidophilus you will find that some recommend that they be taken with meals, but most advise they be taken without. So what is the real deal? Like many things in this field, most practitioners “go with the flow.” I too am guilty of this at times (and even made the recommendation in my book to take them on an empty stomach), but largely because I am already “fighting” so many misunderstandings and fears, I simply didn’t want to add more. Having said that, in my extensive experience with these products, it does not matter when you take them. They work no matter what. More accurately, they work if you take the right amount and use them as healing agents, not crutches. Chapter 7 of "This Works, Crutches Don't" tells you all you need to get results with these products. Do not let the inconsistencies in advice for their use—empty stomach or not—confuse or frustrate you. Just take them!