The following extract is taken from
Medical Aromatherapy:
Healing with Essential Oils by Kurt Schnaubelt, 1999, Frog, Ltd.
North Atlantic Books Berkeley CA. This excerpt
is in Chapter 5, pp. 72-74.
Kurt
Schnaubelt, Ph.D., is Director of the Pacific Institute of
Aromatherapy in San Rafael, California. He offers courses on aromatherapy in San
Rafael as well as by correspondence.
He says: "There is conclusive evidence on the destructive
consequences
of the overuse of antibiotics (and also how to avoid it).
Antibiotic pressure on an organism can be a cofactor in immune
deficiency conditions. Antibiotics were originally prescribed to
fight bacterial diseases. But once these drugs became major
moneymakers, their marketing took on a life of its own. Economic
interests dictates finding more uses for a product that is already
selling well, because sales increase without new development costs.
Research to find additional uses for products is eagerly
sponsored and eventually research and sales create a new reality.
Unaware of the link to mass destruction of their immune systems,
an unsuspecting generation upped its antibiotic intake.
"Antibiotics taken by small children often create the diseases
they aim to cure. Premature antibiotic use during the onset of
a childhood disease will deprive the immune system of the
opportunities to interact with the pathogen.
An inactivated immune
system does not learn to recognize intruding microorganisms,
nor does it learn to build antibodies. The result? A child will quickly
relapse with the same disease and the cycle repeats. A
reoccurring disease becomes chronic and leads to an overall
debilitation of the body.
"Another potentially even greater problem is the
seemingly
unstoppable advance of resistant bacteria. Bacteria, resistant
to most or all of the known antibiotics, are menacing hospitals
and their patients. The development of these "super germs"
was brought on by the reckless use of antibiotics in the meat
industry as well as their over prescription by doctors.
In his
sanely radical book, Spontaneous Healing, (1995, Alfred Knoph)
Andrew Weil comments: 'Doctors must bear much of the responsibility
for getting us into our growing predicament with aggressive
bacteria; by over prescribing and mis-prescribing antibiotics,
they have brought on the coming catastrophe.'
"Antibiotics are still widely prescribed by doctors
for viral conditions
such as the common cold or the flu despite the fact that they are
not effective in these cases. The depth of the conditioning
becomes obvious when antibiotics display placebo effects.
"Workers in an office struggle with the flu for a week or two and,
at some point, a few take antibiotics with the following results.
"Outcome 1: No obvious differences are observed between
those
who take the antibiotics and those who don't. The flu comes and
goes."
"Outcome 2: Some of those who took antibiotics recover
quickly.
A typical belief is that the antibiotics ultimately cured
the flu.
"Outcome 2 is extremely puzzling. Influenza is a viral infection
and antibiotics are not effective against viruses. Still, these
individuals claim that they worked. There are two possible explanations:
1. The immune status of some individuals is so compromised
from
antibiotics overuse or other causes that a flu virus will automatically
trigger bacterial secondary infections of such severity that relief
from
an accompanying symptoms is perceived as the antibiotics being
effective against the flu itself.
2. Our deep conditioning to believe
in the effectiveness of antibiotics triggers improvement. The
antibiotics were a placebo!"
"The antibiotics crisis is an example of the fact
that commerce is
not concerned about the consequences it creates for human life.
All aspects of modern existence are penetrated by the goal to
maximize profits. Sadly, this has been most successful in
medicine."
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