Wednesday, September 19, 2007 Symptoms by treatment, Part 1 By Zosimo T. Literatus, R.M.T. Breakthroughs
CURE is supposed to stop an illness, not to worsen it, or create another one.
However, Vincent J. Derbes observed in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Jama): “One physician cures you of the colic; two physicians cure you of the medicine.”
That is the very essence of side effects as a result of drug therapy (or symptoms of treatment). One such side effect is diarrhea.
Diarrhea is the excretion of more than two liquid stools for three or more days in quantities in excess of normal for each patient, often caused by prolonged antibiotic treatment.
Contrary to what most people believe diarrhea is not a disease, but a symptom—an indication of the presence of a disease. A symptom tells you that somewhere inside your body something is not quite right.
Normally, the large intestine absorbs excess water from the liquid food remains produced from digestion in the stomach and the small intestine so that the voided stools become semisolid. However, for some reason, the mucous lining of the large intestine is irritated or inflamed, and food residue moves very quickly through the large intestine still watery as they are voided.
Antibiotics, such as cephalexin, clarithromycin, cefuroxime axetil, cefixime and a host of other generic names, may cause inflammation of the intestinal lining; that’s why you can hear your doctor advice you to take antibiotics with food.
Many times, however, diarrhea is a complication of antibiotic use. Long-term use of antibiotics causes imbalance in the intestinal environment, killing beneficial bacteria and making otherwise less harmful bacteria, such as Clostridium difficile, multiply so much as to produce enough toxins to cause diarrhea.
Clostridium difficile is a bacterium that belongs to the same family as the toxin-producing bacteria that causes the much-feared botulism (Clostridium botulinum), and tetanus (Clostridium tetani). Botulism can lead to death within a few hours or days. Tetanus develops spasms to the entire body, which eventually lead to death. What is common between these species of bacteria is their ability to produce toxins that cannot be destroyed by intestinal enzymes.
Antidiarrheals also interact with antibiotics exacerbating diarrhea instead of stopping it.
However, studies have shown that there are better and less expensive ways to prevent diarrhea even with the use of antibiotics for an extended period of time.
Next week, you will learn what to do, and understand how it works.
