The Phoenix Gazette, Tuesday, December 24, 1996
British Doctors fear ‘superbug’ can elude, thrive on antibiotics . . . . Associated Press London
London doctors fear they may have encountered a new “superbug” – a bacterium that not only resists antibiotics but thrives on them.
The bacterium infected two post-operative patients at St. George’s Hospital, and when treated with antibiotics quickly adopted them as a vital part of its metabolism, the patients’ doctors wrote in a letter published Friday, in the Lancet medical journal.
“Have we at last witnessed the emergence of a true superbug?” the doctors asked.
The bacterium – enterococcus faecium – caused fevers in the two patients, both men in their 60s who underwent surgery in the hospital this year.
Doctors administered the antibiotic vancomycin, the standard treatment. But within days, the men began resisting the antibiotic, and then the bacterium began to thrive.
Antibiotics inhibit the construction of cell walls in the targeted bacterium. Those bacterial that become resistant to antibiotics successfully synthesized “bypass enzymes” to build the cell walls.
In this case the bacterium apparently relied on the antibiotic to synthesize the enzymes. The doctors switched to another antibiotic, and the patients recovered.
“Resistence to antibiotics is a growing problem all over the world,” said Ian Eltringham of the hospital’s department of medical microbiology. “But here we have a bug that has taken the ultimate evolutionary step by actually becoming dependent on an antibiotic.”
Enter Essential Oils
Essential oils are the healing life-force of plants. They contain virtually all of the plants healing nutrients, oxygenating molecules, amino acid precursors, coenzyme A factors, trace minerals, enzymes, vitamins, hormones and more. That is why a growing number of health professionals consider essential oils to be medicine. . . . A medicine no know pathogen can survive.
Dr. Jean Valent, a well known French medical researcher points out that the essential oil from thyme literally destroys the anthrax bacillus, the glanders bacillus, staphylococcus, the diphtheria bacillus, meningococcus, and Kock’s bacillus, which is the bacterial responsible for tuberculous lesions.
Dr. Valnet adds that the works of Morel and Rochaix have demonstrated the vapors of lemon oil alone will neutralize the typus bacillus and staphylococcus in only five minutes and the diphtheria bacillus in just twenty minutes.
Moreover, infectious pathogens have yet to find a way to become resistant to essential oils, as they do with antibiotics. Dr. Valent states, “Infectious microbes do not appear to become accustomed to the essential oils as they do to the many forms of treatment using antibiotics. This is very important. Antibiotics are certainly powerful weapons, but they can be dangerous and are easily and often misused. Indeed, quite apart from the abusive use of antibiotics, the dramatic increase recently in the resistance of pathogenic microorganisms to all types of antibiotics, sometimes even the latest ones, is well know. “(However, we are finding that the effects of the same oils remain almost unchanged….”
Recent testing in the U.S. has shown the essential oil of clove, oregano and thyme to be even more powerful than penicillin, the medical community’s mainline defense for fighting these “strange” diseases. The results of this study will be soon published in a well known medical journal.
Kathleen Flanagan, CEO and Founder of Awakening Spirit, Aromatherapist, Sound Therapist, Esthetician and Author.