Applying Knowledge of Herbs to Managing Gram-Positive Bacterial Illnesses

Monday's article focused on herbs that are effective against Gram-positive bacteria.  As often happens, I get ahead of myself, or I get distracted and forget to explain something critical.  Fortunately, Anonymous jumped right in and asked a question I should have answered in the article before posting it.  

(For those who have trouble posting comments, try this:  keeping the tab for this blog open, go open another tab, and then return to this page and try to comment.  It might work.  It works for me on other Blogger blogs.)

Anonymous wrote:  Jennifer, how will this work in an austere or grid down situation. Are we assuming that homesteads/preppers will stock microscopes, lab equipment (dishes, slides, etc.) and growth medium? I am sincerely not trying to be a wisenheimer, but I don't understand how to take these pretty technical requirements into a different operational environment. And without these tests, all we are doing is giving our best guess as to what an infection may be. Help?

That is a great question and one which I should have thought to address in Monday’s article.  Many thanks to Anonymous for asking.

I actually do know of a microbiologist who does prep in this manner, but we now live quite a distance from him.  And I think many people may not be so blessed as to have a friendly neighborhood microbiologist prepper.  I also think most of us are not stocking the supplies and equipment to be able to identify pathogens.  I’m not.  I don’t have the skills.  Maybe I could acquire them, and maybe someday I will.  But I’m pretty sure it’s not happening this year, and probably not next year.  There are plenty of other things on the to-do list.

Without the skills, equipment, and supplies, we—even physicians—will be relegated to guesswork.  However, we can make educated guesses to significantly narrow down the list of possible diseases we are dealing with.  For example:

• Patient history/diseases the patient has previously experienced.  If a patient has experienced the exact same symptoms on a previous occasion (and the illness/symptoms were completely resolved), illnesses like ear infections, strep throat, urinary tract infections, diverticulitis, pneumonia, etc., there’s a good chance the same kind of bacteria is causing the current issue.  Using the same antibiotic that worked previously or an herb or herbs that exert an effect similar to that antibiotic may resolve the illness.
• Doctor’s guesses.  Most of the time physicians don’t actually take a sample and send the material off to a laboratory to get cultured.  That takes too much time even now.  Most often, medical personnel will make an educated guess.  For example, in the late 1980s after I had graduated from college and was no longer on my dad’s medical insurance, I discontinued using antibiotics to control my acne.  Suddenly I was getting frequent bacterial infections.  Glands in my neck would swell, making swallowing incredibly painful.  The doctors never cultured anything, just gave me a prescription.  And the doctors always say if the symptoms aren’t improved within 3 days, to come back.  (Which translates to “I’ll make another guess.”)
• Something that is going around.  If several other people in the area have come down with strep throat, and a patient presents with the same symptoms as the others had, strep throat is a reasonable guess and the illness will be treated accordingly, most likely with the same protocol that worked for the others. 
• Telltale symptoms.  There are many illnesses that cause very specific telltale symptoms.  Among other symptoms, those in the early stages of tuberculosis have a low fever in the afternoon.  
  
• Cholera victims have diarrhea that looks like rice water and smells like fish.  Their skin also turns a bluish-gray color.
• Clostridium difficile patients have the most awful-smelling diarrhea that most nurses can identify immediately as being a C. diff infection.  Couple that with the risk factors and patient history to confirm diagnosis.   
• Strep throat has a specific set of criteria for diagnosis without a lab culture.  If the patient doesn’t meet the criteria, strep is unlikely. 
• Illness in typhoid fever patients begins like a cold or flu, with a rising and falling fever that gradually edges high each day.  With typhoid, however, the pulse decreases as the fever increases, suggesting typhoid is the culprit as opposed to something else. 
• Appendicitis (which may be managed with antibiotics in a truly grid-down situation) can be pretty accurately diagnosed using the patient history, applying pressure in specific locations, and asking the patient to hop on his right leg and then lie down on his back and raise the right leg. 
• Rocky Mountain spotted fever is definitively diagnosed with the spots that appear; tick-borne relapsing fever is definitively diagnosed by the fever that occurs for 3 days, disappears for 7, and then repeats.
• The same is true for many other diseases.

Based on those guesses, we can:

• Supplement conventional pharmaceutical antibiotics with an herb or herbs that will help prevent resistance development
• Substitute an herb that exerts effects similar to the desired but perhaps unavailable antibiotic
  
• Shorten the course of treatment with conventional antibiotics, sparing those precious medications for future and perhaps more critical needs (For most illnesses treated with antibiotics, the recommendation is to continue antibiotic use for 2 full days after the illness resolves/fever goes away.)

Gram-positive antibiotics (which definitely should have been listed in Monday’s article) commonly stocked by preparedness-minded individuals include:

• Ciprofloxacin and other –ofloxacin antibiotics (less effective against gram-positive bacteria)
• Erythromycin and other –mycin antibiotics (both gram-positive and –negative)
• Penicillin, amoxicillin, ampicillin
• Tetracycline and other –cycline antibiotics (both gram-positive and –negative)
• Bacitracin

Links to related posts:

Top Ten Herbs That Are Effective Against Gram-Positive Bacteria

Which Antibiotic Do I Store?  

Boost Antibiotic Efficacy with Medicinal Herbs  

 

Tuberculosis in a TEOTWAWKI Society 

Dealing with C. diff in Doomsday  

Identifying and Managing Pneumonia Post-Collapse  

Strep throat—Are Antibiotics Really Needed?  

Appendicitis—Prepping for the Possibility  

Typhoid Fever—It’s in the Water  

Cholera in a Collapsed Society  

Antibiotic Chart to Guide Acquisition 

Amoxicillin for Armageddon  

Ciprofloxacin’s Most Critical Uses in TEOTWAWKI 

Erythromycin in Armageddon